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- 導讀
性別預算，即社會性別預算，有人稱之為“女性預算”、“性別敏感預算”或“實用性別預算分析”，是指從性別角度出發，評估政府的財政收入和支出對女性和男性、女童和男童產生的不同影響的手段和方法。其目的是在國家和地方預算中納入性別視角，以更趨公平的方式分配資源，使政府預算滿足包括女性和男性、女童和男童在內的社會不同群體的需求，進一步促進性別平等。
#Gender Budgeting#
It is easy to be cynical about government and rarely does such cynicism go unrewarded. Take, for instance, policy towards women. Some politicians declare that they value women’s unique role, which can be shorthand for keeping married women at home looking after the kids. Others create whole ministries devoted to policies for women, which can be a device for parking women’s issues on the periphery of policy where they cannot do any harm. Still others, who may actually mean what they say, pass laws giving women equal opportunities to men. Yet decreeing an end to discrimination is very different from bringing it about.
Amid this tangle of evasion half-promises and wishful thinking, some policymakers have embraced a technique called gender budgeting. It not only promises to do a lot of good for women, but carries a lesson for advocates of any cause: the way to a government’s heart is through its pocket.
At its simplest, gender budgeting sets out to quantify how policies affect women and men differently. That seemingly trivial step converts exhortation about treating women fairly into the coin of government: costs and benefits, and investments and returns. You don’t have to be a feminist to recognize, as Austria did, that the numbers show how lowering income tax on second earners will encourage women to join the labour force, boosting growth and tax revenues. Or that cuts to programmes designed to reduce domestic violence would be a false economy, because they would cost so much in medical treatment and lost workdays.
As well as identifying opportunities and errors, gender budgeting brings women’s issues right to the heart of government, the ministry of finance. Governments routinely bat away sensible policies that lack a champion when the money is handed out. But if judgments about what makes sense for women (and the general good) are being formed within the finance ministry itself, then the battle is half-won.
- 詞彙短語
1. Gender budgeting 性別預算
2. cynical 冷嘲的
3. Cynicism 犬儒哲學
4. on the periphery of 在外圍
5. evasion 閃爍其辭
6. half-promises 虛與委蛇
7. wishful thinking 一廂情願
8. quantify 量化
9. costs and benefits 成本與收益
10. investments and returns 投資與回報
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