International Conference at Vienna University of Economics and Business Gender Responsive Budgeting: Theory and Practice in Perspective November 6 – 8, 2014 Session 3: GRB as a transformational approach towards gender equality and women's empowerment. GRB as a Tool for Social Change: Lessons from the Israeli Experience Yael Hasson & Valeria Seigelshifer Abstract In our paper we will discuss the Israeli experience with GRB. This experience has two main features. First, the combination of feminist field work, research and lobby. Second, the parallel effort to initiate top down actions targeted to policy makers, together with the development of a bottom up intervention model based on GRB methods and targeted to women at local communities. GRB was introduced in Israel sixteen years ago by the Adva Center, a nonprofit organization that aims to examine Israeli society from the perspective of equality and social justice. In 2004 the Adva center created the "Women's budget Forum" (WBF) a network of feminist organizations that works together in order to mainstream a gender perspective into national and municipal budgets as well as into public policy. The WBF served as a powerful tool in introducing the idea of GRB to feminist organizations in Israel and in lobbying the concept at the government and parliament. Looking at economic issues from a gender perspective turned out to be an objective that enabled the cooperation of Jewish and Palestinian feminist organizations in the context of a continuing conflict. The WBF combined knowledge from the field work done by its feminist organizations, economic research done by the Adva Center and advocacy work. This unique combination boosted a public discussion about the gender implications of national projects and budgets. Once the idea of GRB was incorporated into the feminist discourse and promoted by a number of politicians and public officials, the WBF began to work also at the municipal level. Local budgets not only have great gender implications on city residents but are also easier to change than national ones. The WBF conducted courses on social economics and training in GRB for municipal advisors on the status of women, elected officials, local authority officials and local community leaders. The knowledge learnt at these courses mobilized participants to incorporate GRB 1

methods into local budget-making in order to promote women at the local level. After several pilot projects, the Adva Center has developed a method of intervention at the local level that consists of a training course accompanied by a community action worker that helps course participants to translate community problems into policy issues and design accordingly a program of intervention. To date, hundreds of women – Jewish and Palestinian - from all over the country have participated in these courses and used GRB methods to improve their situation and that of their communities. The cumulative effect of research, lobby, public discussion through the media and grassroots actions resulted recently in the establishment of a committee for gender budgeting at the Finance Ministry's budgeting department and the submission of a proposed law mandating gender budgeting at the national level.

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GRB as a Tool for Social Change: Lessons from the Israeli Experience Yael Hasson & Valeria Seigelshifer

The Israeli experience with GRB has two main features. First, it involves a combination of feminist field work, research and lobby work. Second, it involves parallel efforts to initiate top down actions targeted to policy makers, and the development of a bottom up intervention model based on GRB methods and targeted to women at local communities. GRB was introduced in Israel sixteen years ago by the Adva Center, a nonprofit organization that aims to examine Israeli society from the perspective of equality and social justice. Since then, the Adva center has been doing annual analyses of the national budget from a gender perspective. The annual gender analysis of the national budget includes an examination of government decisions and budget lines, illuminating how these affect women and men differently, as well as members of the major social groups in Israel. The analysis includes both revenues and expenditures. On the revenues side, sources examined include direct taxes like income and corporate taxes as well as indirect taxes like VAT. On the expenditures side, the focus is on social service budgets and transfer payments. A gender analysis of the budget has been published since 1999 and has had a gradual and growing influence on Israeli public debate, on women's local groups and feminist organisations, and on politicians and decision-makers. Bottom-Up initiatives In 2004 the Adva Center created "The Women's Budget Forum" (WBF), a network of feminist and human rights organizations that aims to mainstream a gender perspective into national and municipal budgeting. The WBF's work combines field activities, research and lobby. Feminist organizations bring knowledge from the field and point to policy areas in which women's disadvantage has heretofor gone unnoticed. The Adva Center, frames this knowledge in economic terms and produces position papers that highlight the differential economic impacts of these issues on men and women. These position papers are used as tools for lobbying and for the introduction of the idea of gender mainstreaming into policy discourse, planning and budgeting. One example of the WBF modus operandi is the analysis of the state guarantee fund for small businesses. "Economic Empowerment for Women" is an NGO member of the WBF that provides loans and training courses in order to assist small businesses owned by women. A few years ago they brought up the issue of the fact that women hardly ever meet the conditions of the state loan fund. The WBF 3

wrote a position paper that analyzed the fund's conditions for receiving loans and illuminated the obstacles these conditions involved for low-income women. The position paper was used for lobbying at the parliament and at the Industry, Labor and Trade Ministry. Similar action practices were used in order to promote other issues, like abolition of the privatization of employment services, the removal of structural obstacles preventing Arab women's participation in the labor market, the introduction of non-transferable paternity leaves and more. One of the milestones in the WBF's influence on the public debate occurred during the summer protest of 2011. This was the largest social protest Israel had ever known, when half a million people marched in the streets demanding affordable housing, subsidized daycare services and the strengthening of a welfare state that has been constantly damaged over the last thirty years by neo-liberal economic policies. From within the social protest a highly gendered movement emerged: A group of three mothers began the stroller march, a protest of parents that stressed the high cost of raising children in Israel. The demands of the stroller march, which would have a direct impact on women in general and on working mothers in particular, were embraced by the public and became an integral part of the protest demands. Those demands were strongly influenced by the work of the Women's Budget Forum. During the months of the social protest, the Women's Budget Forum published a fact sheet about women in the Israeli workplace that highlighted the gender implications of economic policies. In addition, the Forum suggested that policy decisions resulting from the social protest should be gender sensitive. Top Down Targeted Activities In addition to its field activities, research and lobby, the WBF joined in 2008 the EGBN. Being part of an international expert group on the issue of gender budgeting, enabled us to learn from the experience of other countries. In two different events, we invited experts from Sweden and Berlin to discuss their experience with GM and GB at the Israeli Parliment as well as at the Israeli Ministry of Finance. Bringing this knowledge from other countries, together with the on-going activities of the WBF, contributed to the influence felt on the national level. The incorporation of gender budgeting at the national and political level was done in

different ways. We will mention three. Firstly, the Research and Information

Center of the Parliament began to publish its own document describing the gender implications of the national budget. Secondly, an amendment to the Law of Statistics that requires all statutory agencies to gather, analyze and publish data disaggregated by gender was approved by the Parliament. Thirdly and most important, a growing number of politicians gradually started to promote the idea of gender budgeting. The 4

politicians' engagement with gender budgeting led to a major breakthrough this year (2014) when the finance minister established a national committee to examine the implementation of gender mainstreaming into the national budget. After seven months of work, the committee recommended

that the national government

implement gender analysis of every budget line in all of the government ministries. In addition, the committee recommended that the State Revenues Administration analyze and present the gender implications of the state's revenues. Mixed Top-Down and Bottom-Up Model in Local Authorities Once the idea of GRB was incorporated into the feminist discourse and promoted by a number of politicians and public officials, the WBF began to work also at the municipal level. Local budgets not only have great gender implications on city residents but are also easier to change than national ones. The WBF conducted courses on social economics and training in GRB for municipal advisors on the status of women, elected officials, local authority employees, local community leaders and residents.

After several pilot projects, the Adva Center developed a method of

intervention at the local level that consists of a training course accompanied by a community action worker that helps course participants to translate community problems into policy issues and design accordingly a program of intervention. In 2013, the Adva Center published a guide on "How to Conduct a Gender Audit of Municipal Budgets" (http://www.adva.org/default.asp?pageid=1002&itmid=739) that offers guidelines for conducting a gender audit of local authority budgets and is used by course participants in developing their projects. To date, we have being working in 12 localities – Jewish and Arab – and hundreds of women have participated in these courses. The projects promoted by course participants have influenced public policy on different levels: Firstly, by introducing a gender perspective into public services and programs; secondly, by changing local resource allocation so that women's needs are better met; and thirdly, by increasing women's presence in positions of power. One example of the introduction of a gender perspective into public services and programs, is the work of women from Beer Sheba, a city in the South of Israel. The project participants requested gender disaggregated data regarding the participants of vocational training courses offered by the Ministry of Economics. After discovering that over the last five years, women constituted only a third of the participants of vocational training courses, they met with the person in charge at the Ministry of Economics, presented the data they had collected and demanded a policy change. In addition, the women persuaded the Government Employment Service office in Beer

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Sheba to offer the full range of vocational training courses to women rather than only those stereotyped for women, like kindergarten assistant and hairdresser. In Tirat HaCarmel, a city in the North of Israel, women worked to mainstream gender equality into public education. As a result of their work, two schools and one day care center for toddlers adopted gender equality programs. In addition the program "City without Violence" program in that city that works with adolescents will incorporate a gender equality perspective. An example of changing local resource allocation so that they meet women's needs is the work of women from Or Akiva, a city in the center of the country. Here the women worked in order to make cultural events held in the community more appropriate to them in terms of both content and cost. This last issue stemed from the women's perception that cultural events hosted by the locality are attended mostly by residents of the more affluent, neighboring locality of Caesaria and that they are too expensive for many Or Akiva residents. As a result of women's work, the mayor agreed to subsidise tickets for local residents. In addition, an event at Hebrew Book Week was devoted to women's writings. At Kfar Kassem, an Arab city in the center of the country, women worked to build a public park in the city area where women could exercise and jog. The idea of a public park in the city emerged from women's need to have a place close to their homes where they could be with their children and exercise in the evening. They met with the mayor and the city engineer and organized a city tour to public areas where the park could be built. As a result of their activities, a park is being built and women are already using the space for their sport activities. The women from Or Akiva also worked to increase women's presence in positions of power. They focused on getting more women appointed to municipal committees, which make many decisions relevant to all residents of the community. As a result of their lobby actions, 13 women were recently appointed to municipal committees and the advisor to the mayor on the status of women began to participate regularly in the finance and public tender committees. Limitations in the implementation of GRB in Israel Since its establishment ten years ago, the WBF has had a significant influence on Israeli economic discourse and policy analysis. Initiatives on gender budgeting are being conducted at the national and at the local levels and the media is much more open to cover economic issues from a gender perspective. Nevertheless, there are two significant factors that limit the WBF's impact on Israeli's economy. Firstly, the economic paradigm reigning in Israel over the last three decades is based on neoliberal principles that foster downsizing the government's role in the economy; set 6

growth as the main goal of economic policy; and assign the leading role of economic growth to the business sector, rather than the government. Secondly, the ongoing Israeli ocupation of Palestinian territories, which has a great impact on the region's economy. Since the above neo-liberal principles in the majority of the cases do not support the type of activities required to implement gender budgeting policies, the influence of the WBF on economic policy is limited and is reflected mainly in increasing the goverment's transparency and data collection rather than in changing policy planning and practices. In addition, as long as the defense budget continues to play a central role in Israeli's economy, fewer resources are left to spend on social services, which have a greater impact on women's lives. Therefore, at the macro level, despite the multiple and varied work of the WBF and its significant influence on the economic discourse and public policy analysis, a much more profound and radical change is needed in the government's worldviews and priorities in order to reduce gender inequality in Israel.

Yael Hasson: [email protected] Valeria Seigelshifer: [email protected] Adva Center: www.adva.org

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