Periodic Reporting for period 2 - BUDGET IT (Building Gender Equality through gender budgeting for Institutional Transformation)
Reporting period: 2024-01-01 to 2025-12-31
Across Europe and its neighbouring regions, progress toward gender equality is under increasing pressure. In the three widening countries at the centre of this project, namely Turkey, Bosnia and Herzegovina, and Serbia, these pressures are especially pronounced. Turkey has withdrawn from the Istanbul Convention and restricted institutional use of the term gender, while Serbia and Bosnia struggle with weak implementation of existing legal frameworks and rising nationalist rhetoric that frames gender equality claims as extremism.
Gender Equality Plans are the primary instrument through which institutions have sought to advance equality. Yet most GEPs share two critical weaknesses: they fail to address intersectionality meaningfully, and they leave institutional budgets entirely unexamined, even though resource allocation decisions often reinforce the very inequalities GEPs seek to eliminate.
Budget-It brought together nine partners, namely Kadir Has University, Sarajevo School of Science and Technology, University of Belgrade, Università degli Studi di Brescia, Universidad de Alicante, and the municipalities of Brescia, Novelda, Maltepe, and Stari Grad, to develop intersectional GEPs integrated with gender-responsive budgets. The inclusion of four municipalities alongside five universities recognised that transformation must extend beyond academia. Gender studies, sociology, law, and political science were central to translating understanding of inequality into concrete institutional policy.
Expected impacts included replicable models for intersectional GEP-GB frameworks applicable across Europe, more equitable distribution of institutional resources, and, by engaging municipalities serving over 800,000 residents, a broader cultural shift toward genuine gender equality in public life.
Gender Equality Plans are the primary instrument through which institutions have sought to advance equality. Yet most GEPs share two critical weaknesses: they fail to address intersectionality meaningfully, and they leave institutional budgets entirely unexamined, even though resource allocation decisions often reinforce the very inequalities GEPs seek to eliminate.
Budget-It brought together nine partners, namely Kadir Has University, Sarajevo School of Science and Technology, University of Belgrade, Università degli Studi di Brescia, Universidad de Alicante, and the municipalities of Brescia, Novelda, Maltepe, and Stari Grad, to develop intersectional GEPs integrated with gender-responsive budgets. The inclusion of four municipalities alongside five universities recognised that transformation must extend beyond academia. Gender studies, sociology, law, and political science were central to translating understanding of inequality into concrete institutional policy.
Expected impacts included replicable models for intersectional GEP-GB frameworks applicable across Europe, more equitable distribution of institutional resources, and, by engaging municipalities serving over 800,000 residents, a broader cultural shift toward genuine gender equality in public life.
Budget-It was implemented over three years through five work packages, following an iterative design thinking methodology structured around three progressive phases: the revision of Gender Equality Plans (GEPs) in Year 1, the implementation of gender audits and gender budgeting in Year 2, and the integration of both into unified GEP-GB frameworks in Year 3.
In the first year, all nine partners administered the Gender Equality Audit and Monitoring (GEAM) survey, translated into local languages including an adapted version for municipal staff, and conducted extensive focus group programmes. These activities generated an intersectional evidence base directly informing each partner's revised GEP, with every institution identifying at least three specific intersections, including age, disability, sexual orientation, nationality, and caring responsibilities, as priority areas.
The second year marked a genuine methodological advance: for the first time, all partner institutions systematically examined their budgets from a gender perspective, demonstrating that resources assumed to be allocated neutrally in fact frequently disadvantaged women and other marginalised groups. By the end of the project, all nine partners had published updated inclusive GEPs and completed integrated GEP-GB frameworks, alongside publicly available e-booklets on inclusive GEPs and gender auditing and budgeting in multiple languages.
Institutional achievements were concrete and lasting. The Municipality of Stari Grad formally adopted a Local Action Plan for Gender Equality and established a permanent Gender Equality Commission within its Municipal Assembly. The Municipality of Brescia produced a Gender Budgeting Report presented publicly to citizens and secured commitments from the Municipality of Cremona to introduce its own gender budgeting process. Maltepe Municipality launched its 2025 to 2029 Gender Equality Plan with a public commitment to gender-responsive budgeting. Among university partners, the University of Belgrade integrated project outcomes into its Law and Gender Master Programme and presented Budget-It results to the United Nations Working Group on Discrimination Against Women and Girls. Kadir Has University published its Inclusive Gender Equality Plan 2025 to 2027, and the Sarajevo School of Science and Technology developed its first gender action plan and established a student EDI Club to sustain equality activities beyond the project.
These results were achieved in a politically challenging environment marked by anti-gender movements, legal pressures on LGBTI+ communities in Turkey, and political unrest in Serbia. The fact that all partners maintained full engagement and delivered their institutional outputs in these circumstances makes the achievements of Budget-It all the more significant.
In the first year, all nine partners administered the Gender Equality Audit and Monitoring (GEAM) survey, translated into local languages including an adapted version for municipal staff, and conducted extensive focus group programmes. These activities generated an intersectional evidence base directly informing each partner's revised GEP, with every institution identifying at least three specific intersections, including age, disability, sexual orientation, nationality, and caring responsibilities, as priority areas.
The second year marked a genuine methodological advance: for the first time, all partner institutions systematically examined their budgets from a gender perspective, demonstrating that resources assumed to be allocated neutrally in fact frequently disadvantaged women and other marginalised groups. By the end of the project, all nine partners had published updated inclusive GEPs and completed integrated GEP-GB frameworks, alongside publicly available e-booklets on inclusive GEPs and gender auditing and budgeting in multiple languages.
Institutional achievements were concrete and lasting. The Municipality of Stari Grad formally adopted a Local Action Plan for Gender Equality and established a permanent Gender Equality Commission within its Municipal Assembly. The Municipality of Brescia produced a Gender Budgeting Report presented publicly to citizens and secured commitments from the Municipality of Cremona to introduce its own gender budgeting process. Maltepe Municipality launched its 2025 to 2029 Gender Equality Plan with a public commitment to gender-responsive budgeting. Among university partners, the University of Belgrade integrated project outcomes into its Law and Gender Master Programme and presented Budget-It results to the United Nations Working Group on Discrimination Against Women and Girls. Kadir Has University published its Inclusive Gender Equality Plan 2025 to 2027, and the Sarajevo School of Science and Technology developed its first gender action plan and established a student EDI Club to sustain equality activities beyond the project.
These results were achieved in a politically challenging environment marked by anti-gender movements, legal pressures on LGBTI+ communities in Turkey, and political unrest in Serbia. The fact that all partners maintained full engagement and delivered their institutional outputs in these circumstances makes the achievements of Budget-It all the more significant.
Budget-It made three contributions that move beyond the existing state of the art in gender equality planning and gender-responsive budgeting.
The most significant was the demonstration that GEPs and gender budgeting must be structurally integrated to achieve genuine institutional transformation. Evidence gathered across nine institutions in five countries showed that budgets routinely reproduce the very inequalities GEPs seek to address, establishing a new standard for what an effective gender equality plan must include.
A second advance was the practical operationalisation of intersectionality, through a workable model in which each institution identified contextually relevant intersections and integrated these into both their GEP and gender budget, moving equality measures beyond a narrow focus on the majority of women.
A third contribution was the extension of the GEP-GB model to municipalities, demonstrating that local government represents a critical and underutilised site for gender equality transformation with direct impact on the residents municipalities serve daily.
Overview of Results
All nine partner institutions published updated inclusive intersectional GEPs, completed gender audits, and produced integrated GEP-GB frameworks. Two multilingual e-booklets and a policy brief were made publicly available. An edited volume with contributions from four partner universities is forthcoming in the Springer series Gender Perspectives in Law. Widening country partners delivered national-level GEP-GB training sessions to peer institutions, extending the project's impact beyond the consortium.
Key Needs for Further Uptake
Stronger national regulatory frameworks and the inclusion of gender budgeting as an explicit requirement in future Horizon Europe funding conditions would significantly accelerate broader uptake. Dedicated funding programmes supporting municipality-focused gender equality initiatives in widening countries would help scale the model where it can generate the greatest societal impact.
The most significant was the demonstration that GEPs and gender budgeting must be structurally integrated to achieve genuine institutional transformation. Evidence gathered across nine institutions in five countries showed that budgets routinely reproduce the very inequalities GEPs seek to address, establishing a new standard for what an effective gender equality plan must include.
A second advance was the practical operationalisation of intersectionality, through a workable model in which each institution identified contextually relevant intersections and integrated these into both their GEP and gender budget, moving equality measures beyond a narrow focus on the majority of women.
A third contribution was the extension of the GEP-GB model to municipalities, demonstrating that local government represents a critical and underutilised site for gender equality transformation with direct impact on the residents municipalities serve daily.
Overview of Results
All nine partner institutions published updated inclusive intersectional GEPs, completed gender audits, and produced integrated GEP-GB frameworks. Two multilingual e-booklets and a policy brief were made publicly available. An edited volume with contributions from four partner universities is forthcoming in the Springer series Gender Perspectives in Law. Widening country partners delivered national-level GEP-GB training sessions to peer institutions, extending the project's impact beyond the consortium.
Key Needs for Further Uptake
Stronger national regulatory frameworks and the inclusion of gender budgeting as an explicit requirement in future Horizon Europe funding conditions would significantly accelerate broader uptake. Dedicated funding programmes supporting municipality-focused gender equality initiatives in widening countries would help scale the model where it can generate the greatest societal impact.