The Journey to Gender-Responsive Budgeting: Lessons Learned from Higher Education

Chiara Oppi, Caterina Cavicchi and Emidia Vagnoni
Additional contact information
Chiara Oppi: Center for Socio-Economic Dynamics and Co-operation, University of Bergamo, 24127 Bergamo, Italy
Caterina Cavicchi: Department of Economics and Management, University of Ferrara, 44121 Ferrara, Italy
Emidia Vagnoni: Department of Economics and Management, University of Ferrara, 44121 Ferrara, Italy

Sustainability, 2021, vol. 13, issue 4, 1-23

Abstract: The United Nations Sustainable Development Goals Agenda includes gender equality as one of its 17 goals and emphasizes the importance of supporting women’s empowerment to meet the SDGs. Gender-responsive budgeting (GRB) can help achieve gender equality in organizations, but there continue to be limitations on exploiting its full potential. Further research is needed, especially in the public sector and at higher education institutions. This paper investigates the development of the GRB process and the related reporting practices, as well as the potential to fully integrate it into the university’s strategic policies at the University of Ferrara. The paper is based on a qualitative content analysis of annual GRB reports from 2011 to 2018. The results show that, during this period, GRB at the university changed from playing an accountability role to having a performance measurement role. Although GRB has become more relevant inside the organization, the extent of the integration with the university strategy and the budgeting cycle remains limited, which hampers the strategic relevance of GRB.

Keywords: gender-responsive budgeting; gender-responsive budgeting report; higher education institutions; content analysis; Italy; sustainable development (search for similar items in EconPapers)
JEL-codes: O13 Q Q0 Q2 Q3 Q5 Q56 (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 2021
References: View references in EconPapers View complete reference list from CitEc
Citations: View citations in EconPapers (1)

Downloads: (external link)
https://www.mdpi.com/2071-1050/13/4/2019/pdf (application/pdf)
https://www.mdpi.com/2071-1050/13/4/2019/ (text/html)

Related works:
This item may be available elsewhere in EconPapers: Search for items with the same title.

Export reference: BibTeX RIS (EndNote, ProCite, RefMan) HTML/Text

Persistent link: https://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:gam:jsusta:v:13:y:2021:i:4:p:2019-:d:498982

Access Statistics for this article

Sustainability is currently edited by Ms. Alexandra Wu

More articles in Sustainability from MDPI
Bibliographic data for series maintained by MDPI Indexing Manager ().