It is about ensuring that the municipal budget addresses the needs of different groups of residents — women and men, children and elderly people, veterans, persons with disabilities and internally displaced persons. And that every decision on expenditures is based on an analysis of the real situation.
Following amendments to the Budget Code of Ukraine, a gender-sensitive approach has become mandatory at all stages of the budget process, from planning to implementation. However, municipalities often have to find their own answers as to how exactly to put this into practice.
As Inna Sviatna, a National Adviser on Municipal Finance and Public Investment Management and head of the designated working group, explains, U-LEAD with Europe systematically supports municipalities on their path to implementing gender-responsive budgeting, as this requires both the compilation of comprehensive statistics and the sustained efforts of all budget administrators.
Case of Lyptsi municipality
The municipality of Lyptsi, Vinnytsia Oblast, conducted a gender analysis of 53 budget programmes across all sectors, including education, social services, healthcare, culture, sports, housing and utility infrastructure, etc.
Halyna Poiedynok, the Head of the Financial Management Department of Lyptsi City Council, speaks about this without grandstanding, but with a clear understanding of the scale: “We do not claim to be the best. However, I do believe that we have accomplished a difficult task — using accessible methods and understandable approaches”.
The municipality reviewed each programme separately. They analysed:
- breakdown of employees by gender and age;
- wage level;
- access to decision-making;
- specific social needs;
- differences in the use of services by different groups.
Even governance programmes — such as financial management — were analysed from a gender sensitivity perspective.
“We set ourselves the task of determining whether the programme is gender-sensitive or gender-neutral. And whether we can make a difference in each particular case. Because not every process can be changed at once,” says Halyna Poiedynok.
That said, one of the biggest challenges is the lack of reliable statistics. Due to the war, migration and changes in registers, municipalities do not have a complete picture of the population. Some people live without registration. Children study in other municipalities. Data from different services are not always consistent.
“We are not going to figure out the ‘actual value of the unreliable data’. We only deal with verified sources, such as accounting reports, budget passports, official registers. If there is no accurate data, we honestly record it,” says Halyna Poiedynok.
That is why Lyptsi is concurrently working on developing a gender profile for the municipality — a document that will enable the systematic collection and updating of information.
Sports, roads and the reserve fund: where gender is “visible” and where it is not
Gender analysis in the municipality revealed things that were not immediately obvious. For example, there are significantly more boys than girls in a sports school. But this does not mean that we need to “level” the numbers artificially.
“We cannot force a girl to take up taekwondo if she does not want to. Our task is to provide an opportunity. If someone wants to play sports, they have access to them. If they want to dance, they have access to that,” says Ms Poiedynok.
Another example is the provision of public amenities. Street lighting, barrier-free access, benches, public transport stops are matters of safety and accessibility for various groups, including women, the elderly, and parents with children. Even the reserve fund was labelled by the municipality as a “mixed” programme:
“At the planning stage, the reserve fund is gender-neutral. But when it comes to implementation, it becomes gender-sensitive, because in an emergency, the first to need support are lonely people, people with disabilities, mothers with children”.
Thus, gender analysis in Lyptsi did not just stay theoretical. Gender indicators have already been included in budget proposals. Local programmes have separate sections on the impact on different population groups. New social challenges have been factored into the medium-term forecast.
“We must give everyone the opportunity to develop, regardless of whether they are a woman or a man, a child or a veteran. We must ensure equal access to services. This is our main goal”.
Budget as an engine of fairness in challenging times
In times of recovery and limited resources, the matter of quality budgetary decisions becomes particularly sensitive. Not only do municipalities plan their expenditures, but they also determine development priorities, access to services, and the level of support for different populations. That is why gender-responsive budgeting is gradually shifting from formal compliance to strategic management.
Inna Sviatna notes that there is demand among municipalities for the introduction of gender-responsive budgeting, and U-LEAD continues to provide support in this area:
“The key challenges include the lack of statistics, especially data on the population and service recipients disaggregated by gender, age, place of residence, disability, etc. Work should begin with the compilation of data on women’s and men’s situations, sourced from official state statistical, financial and administrative reports, analytical reports and studies by state authorities, local self-government bodies, international organisations, scientific institutions, NGOs, etc. Focus group surveys, questionnaires, observations, interviews, etc. should be conducted to collect additional data. The next step is to devise a gender profile of the municipality and keep it updated”.
The experience of Lyptsi municipality proves that even in difficult circumstances, it is possible to systematically analyse budget programmes, integrate a gender perspective into local documents, and make it part of everyday governance practices. Examples like these are shaping a new culture of budgeting in Ukrainian municipalities.
