Moving beyond compliance: Learning from Sweden and Norway to improve the Philippine gender budgeting process

The research examines the gender budgeting journeys of the Philippines, Sweden and Norway to benchmark good gender equality practices in order to generate recommendations to improve the Philippine gender budgeting practices. It will be of interest to scholars studying gender mainstreaming and gender budgeting, as well as practitioners involved in designing, and monitoring & evaluation of gender plans and budgets, especially of government agencies and localities. It poses the question “what can the Philippines learn from the gender equality practices of the Nordic countries, specifically Norway and Sweden to help improve its gender budgeting practices further?” While the Philippines is the only country in Asia that has consistently remained in the top ten of the Global Gender Gap Index Report of the World Economic Forum, it is unclear whether the implementation of its gender budgeting policy since the early 1990s has yielded concrete results. A qualitative comparative case study methodology using the structured, focused approach was utilized combined with the analytical framework that looks at gender budgeting as a technical concern, political process and governance tool. The presence of four enabling conditions for gender budgeting obtained from the literature: gender-responsive legislation, political will, institutional mechanisms and civil society support are also established while tracing the development of gender budgeting in the three countries under investigation. The research finds that the Nordic region, represented by Sweden and Norway, has generated good practices on the areas of parental leave, childcare, flexible work arrangements, and leadership and equal opportunities at work. After examining the gender budgeting journeys of the three countries and establishing the presence of the four enabling conditions, it concludes that the optimal way to view gender budgeting is too look at is as a balance between the three views and this is most closely exhibited by Sweden in the investigation. Policy recommendations were proposed, with specific focus on how the learnings can be utilized by the Philippines. Potential areas for research are likewise noted.