Periodic Reporting for period 1 - BUDGET IT (Building Gender Equality through gender budgeting for Institutional Transformation)
Reporting period: 2023-01-01 to 2023-12-31
Budget-It is a three-year project designed to use gender+ budgeting to transform institutions to advance inclusive gender+ equality and enhance the reputation, inclusiveness, and research excellence of the widening countries of Bosnia, Serbia and Turkey assisted by internationally leading university counterparts in Italy and Spain. Building Gender+ Equality Through Gender+ Budgeting For Institutional Transformation (Budget-It) proposes the use of gender+ budgeting as a tool to move past the current stagnation surrounding gender+ equality. All too often GEPs are implemented without the required commitment of resources and the allocation of resources often remaining unexamined with institutional budgets reinforcing gender+ inequalities including inequities among women. The integration of gender+ budgeting into GEPs will ensure that institutions are distributing their resources in an equitable and intersectional way. By the end of the project, partner institutions will have produced an integrated, inclusive gender+ equality plan and gender+ budget (GEP-GB). The consortium, composed of both universities and municipalities, will ensure the transfer of theory to practice and
for knowledge to move beyond the walls of academia to create greater institutional and societal transformation; to further impact the wider culture and institutions surrounding the participating university partners. This type of partnership recognises that universities do not exist in isolation but also reflect the local realities they inhabit, including the municipalities in and around their locations. Transformation must not end at the walls of the university but extend to the wider culture including government – something that has been missing from previously funded GEP projects that had primarily focused on research producing/funding organisations. Municipalities, through the provision of services, impact the lives of many thousands and as such provides the opportunity to create a wider space in the public sphere for gender+ equality. The overall objective of Budget-It is to create
institutional transformation towards inclusive gender+ equality through a participatory and collaborative process of knowledge exchange, networking, capacity building and reputation enhancement for the widening partners.
for knowledge to move beyond the walls of academia to create greater institutional and societal transformation; to further impact the wider culture and institutions surrounding the participating university partners. This type of partnership recognises that universities do not exist in isolation but also reflect the local realities they inhabit, including the municipalities in and around their locations. Transformation must not end at the walls of the university but extend to the wider culture including government – something that has been missing from previously funded GEP projects that had primarily focused on research producing/funding organisations. Municipalities, through the provision of services, impact the lives of many thousands and as such provides the opportunity to create a wider space in the public sphere for gender+ equality. The overall objective of Budget-It is to create
institutional transformation towards inclusive gender+ equality through a participatory and collaborative process of knowledge exchange, networking, capacity building and reputation enhancement for the widening partners.
To date, partners have been at work to revise existing gender equality plans to ensure they are intersectional. To assist partners with this effort, the University of Alicante provided training to all partners on intersectionality and integrating intersectionality in to gender action plans. To achieve this partners have adapted and conducted the Gender Equality Audit and Monitoring Survey (GEAM) to members of their organization. Partners have also held focus groups to gain a deeper understanding of participants understanding of equality and which intersections were a priority. This information will help partners work on revising the GEP in an intersectional way as we move into year 2 of the project.
The largest impact in this project is in each partner institution. The inclusive gender equality plans that are being created have the potential to create cultures of equality in each organization. Gender equality that recognizes that gender is multifaceted and that it intersects with other social identities that must be recognized and taken into account.