Screenshot of the Gender Budgeting manual that was developed for the pilot project.
In Malaysia, a GRB initiative was introduced back in 2003 under then prime minister Tun Abdullah Ahmad Badawi who had instructed the Women, Family and Community Development Ministry to oversee it with technical and financial assistance provided by the United Nations Development Programme (UNDP). It began with a pilot project in five ministries (Education and Higher Education, Health, Human Resources, and Rural Development) that were supposed to test and refine the approach and format of gender budgeting in Malaysia. The pilot also included the development of a manual on Gender Budgeting in Malaysia.
Its aim was “to test and develop a proven, workable format for gender budgeting that could be applied to the rest of the government”, according to the manual published by the Women’s Ministry in 2005 (https://shorturl.at/auJ59).
However, founder of Engender Consultancy Omna Sreeni-Ong points out that there is no report on the rollout of this pilot programme available online or on the women’s ministry website to show how effective it was or if it was rolled out to other ministries and agencies at all.
“However, we do know that there was training of officers (in gender budget analysis skills and developing gender-sensitive budget statements) that were conducted initially by international and local expert and that there were the appointments of gender focal points (comprising high-ranking officers). The Gender Focal Points structure was revived in 2022 where the role was expanded to Gender Focal Teams in each ministry,” says Omna.
“Another very important thing that came out this time was the (annual budget call circular) from the Finance Ministry that requires ministries, at the beginning of every budget cycle, to ensure that their budgets are informed by sex-disaggregated data and a gender analysis. These are things that have been done that we must recognise.”
Despite the lack of transparency about the outcome and monitoring of the pilot initiative, there has been progress here and there.At the state level, the Penang government has implemented Gender-Responsive Participatory Budgeting in 2012 while the Selangor state government began introducing gender mainstreaming efforts in 2020.
CSOs have also taken the lead at the national level via the Gender Budget Group (GBG) and have been working with government in the training of officers towards the implementation of a gender responsive national budget.
“It’s good that there was the pilot project because it laid the foundation for the work of the GBG's Gender Responsive Budgeting in Practice (GRBiP) training for Gender Focal Teams in collaboration with at MOF,” says Omna.
Despite the “lost opportunities” in making Budget 2024 more gender responsive, both Abinaya and Omna agree that the country seems to be on track getting there, albeit slowly.
“I think we knew from the get-go that a gender budget was not something that would happen overnight. The GRB programme we are conducting actually looks at the whole budget cycle, not just the allocations in the Budget. We are looking at the programmes that are in place, how we can improve data collection exercises and how we can gender sensitise civil servants... this is a cultural and institutional change and it will take time,” says Abinaya Mohan, Women’s Aid Organisation (WAO) advocacy director.
“I am hopeful,” adds Omna. “We need to look at incremental gains and not just focus on gaps. We cannot expect spikes and look for a full for gender budget immediately but the key is to have consistent capacity building throughout the year. Where there is commitment by the leadership, ministries are likely to undertake it.
“And we need to ask how many women are brought to the table in all the committees that are being formed – where are there women?”
