The Indonesian government, through Presidential Instruction (Inpres) Number 9/2000, has established a legal basis for Gender Mainstreaming (PUG) in all aspects of national development. The government had begun taking strategic steps to disseminate gender-based perspectives. In that regard, the Indonesian government, after the reformation in 1998, has shown its willingness to implement PUG strategies in its development programs, policies, and regulations. Three years after the Presidential Instruction was issued, the “Decree of the Minister of Home Affairs Number 132/2003 on General Guidelines on the Implementation of Gender Mainstreaming for Local Development“ was introduced. These join the growing list of gender-based equitable policies, such as “Law Number 7/1984 on the ratification of Convention on the Elimination of All Forms of Discrimination against Women; CEDAW“.
Relating to the efforts of the government to implement PUG strategy, there are several regulations, such as Law Number 25/2004 on National Development Planning System, specifically Chapter 12, that refers to the improvement of women’s quality of life and children’s welfare and protection. Gender is also mentioned in thirteen other chapters; which function as the operational basis for the implementation of the PUG strategies in each field of development.
The policy was then reinforced in “Presidential Regulation Number 7 /2005 on the Medium Term National Development Plan (RPJM) year 2004-2009“. Specifically, the government issued its annual work plan, Government Work Plan (RKP) 2005 which is under Law Number 36/2004. The law highlights the importance of gender analysis for development policy. Furthermore, Presidential Regulation Number 39/2005 which is used as the RKP work basis, affirms that PUG is stipulated as one of the strategies needed to be implemented in all aspects of development to ensure that policies, programs, and development activities are gender-responsive .
We often find a gap between programs or policies, and their budget allocations. These gaps can also be seen in the willingness of the government to be more transparent and participate in its planning and budgeting process. The budgeting process for example, is within the domain and discretion of local government; however, the planning process should require engagement with the people. This will encourage the government to take strategic steps in disseminating gender-based perspectives. In short, the local government budget in Indonesia has not yet utilized gender-based perspectives. The budget then behaves simply as an aggregate, so the recognition of socially and culturally different identifying factors is not taken into account which leads to biased policy-making. As a consequence, this often results in unequal benefits for men and women. If allowed to persist, development will not truly be aimed at improving people’s welfare because marginalized communities are being left behind.
Beside these gaps, another problem is the lack of knowledge regarding ‘Gender’ between the public and government officials. People often equate a woman’s gender with their sex, shifting focus away from the social and cultural construction of gender – the real culprit of how men and women are stratified within society. This shift in focus also contributes to people’s ignorance of the intersectionality between gender, class, and other identifying factors. In practice, this discriminates against women in all fields that women’s welfare is worse off than men’s. Although people interpret gender and sex as the same thing, there has at least been evidence of a willingness to try to understand the difference.
The fundamental problem is the fact that most local government officials who deal with budgeting completely lack an understanding of ‘Gender’. Even if they do understand, they have not been able to utilize gender-based perspectives to prioritize programs and budgets equitably. As a consequence, women are disadvantaged within the context of budget allocation for development. Due to this, development results have not made women equal to men. This indicates a gap in the understanding and using of gender-based perspectives in program planning and budgeting.
‘Gender Budget Drafting’ has the potential to reduce the gap, hopefully avoiding this prevalent bias. Even though participation has been welcomed, strong social and cultural barriers remain as obstacles that prevent these rightful stakeholders from influencing the decision-making process. Even when women attend these meetings, women are often only counted in the context of their attendance, but not for their contribution. As a result, their access to and control of development programs is weak, largely still dominated by men. This form of passive discrimination needs to be addressed.
Since the government policy on PUG was proclaimed in 2000, discussions on gender issues in development have become more prevalent. The policy does not only encourage bureaucrats to incorporate gender-based perspectives, but also persuade international donor organizations to support civil society organizations in accelerating gender-based social movements. Advocacy for gender budgeting has now been the focus of Non-Governmental Organizations’ (NGOs) activities in Indonesia for the last five years.
Advocacy for gender budgeting has been set in 2001 by several members of the Gender Budget Analysis Forum, NGOs who work at the national level, supported locally by in-network and forum members. At the national level, the forum advocates gender budgeting by urging People’s Consultative Assembly (MPR) to allocate a budget of 30% for the education sector, 15 % for the health sector, and 5% from the state budget for women’s empowerment programs (Decree of People’s Consultative Assembly No.6/2000). At the local level, the forum encourages local governments to draft gender-conscious budgets, using Surakarta, Yogyakarta, Surabaya, Sulawesi Selatan, Mataram, and Kupang as evidence of positive change. Even though the start of the advocacy does not begin from budget issue− like in Sulawesi, Surabaya, Mataram, and Kupang, which began from voter education, eventually there was a joint venture between the local government and the Regional Legislative Council (DPRD) in drafting their local governmental budget (APBD), becoming more gender-responsive through active participation in proposing programs during Musrenbang.
Nevertheless, Musrembang-regulations that open public participation in planning and budgeting, seem to not have been able to encourage most districts or cities to restructure their APBD. Through the advocacy to support public participation, it is expected that the percentage of Regular Budget to Development Budget is no longer 89:11 in proportion, but finally reach the ideal of 50:50 to give meaningful impact to marginalized communities. The involvement of several civil organizations in advocacy has seemed to encourage the government to issue several policies which guarantee the implementation of PUG strategies in Indonesia. One of the regulations that can be referred to when an NGO performs advocacy toward executives in drafting gender budgets is the Decree of the Minister of Home Affairs No.132/2003. Gender budget (ABG) is a tool to build equity, balance, and gender equality. As of now, gender-conscious budgeting has not yet achieved this goal.
Government regulations have opened up spaces for public participation in drafting the priority of programs in accordance to the needs of the people. Even so, these regulations have not yet fulfilled their goals. The indicators which show the high rate of social injustice experienced by women in Indonesia is currently increasing. For example, the high rate of maternal mortality (AKI). In 2002, the ratio of maternal mortality was 380/100.000 (Central Bureau of Statistics (BPS) et al, 2004). The data from BPS on the number of illiterate women who are above 10 years old in rural areas shows a percentage of 16% illiterate women and 7% illiterate men. In urban areas, the difference in percentage shows a percentage of 8% for women and 3% for men. The data from the United Nations Population Fund (UNFPA) shows that women above 15 years old who are illiterate constitute 45% of the population while the percentage is “only” 23 for men. The data is explained by Dr. Meiwita Budiharsana, a representative of Ford Foundation in Indonesia, referenced too by Kompas in the 24th of September 2005 via one of Pambuddy’s speaking engagements in Jakarta
Gender budget, which had been introduced in Indonesia has not yet brought any changes in the welfare of marginalized people, women specifically. Up to now, the budgeting system in our country still has not employed gender-based perspectives. In fact, the budgeting system is gender-biased because the discourse of the dominant patriarchy makes it dismissive towards the needs of women. The government, in setting its budget allocation and distribution, often does not consider the peoples different needs. The assumption that the budget allocated for public and officials will definitely be utilized by both men and women has become a trite cliche for poorly made policies. Government officials often disregard that people with different identifying factors will require different allocations. The impact of implementing budget policies with only the needs of men regarded causes women to be marginalized.
Advocacy is a necessary strategic program to support the implementation of gender budgeting. This can be seen from the regulations issued by the government at the national level. With the implementation of a decentralization system though, budget advocacy can be done not only at the national level, but also in each district or city. As a result, aiding the process of Musrembang becomes difficult. The same thing applies to participating local government’s decision making forums. Proper regulations often cannot be implemented because the gender perspective has not been made a basic consideration when drafting development budgets.
It is also important to promptly conduct an assessment of the impact and capacity of the gender-budget advocates to identify the socio-cultural and political obstacles. This is necessary considering the tendency of the government’s rules and regulations not being implemented or if there is a budget deviation which results in the budget being gender-unresponsive. From this assessment, we will be able to spot the failure and success of inclusive local governance and citizen engagement in encouraging the improvement of welfare among the marginalized people.
Challenges
Thus far, there are quite a few terms related to gender budgeting which in Bahasa Indonesia would need to be translated into several different translations. Women Research Institute (WRI) chose to use the term “Gender Budget” based on political, social, and cultural reasons:
- The Indonesian government has expressed its support to achieve gender equity and equality by issuing PUG policies for all of the legal work plans. However, there is often a gap between the policies that support gender equality and the way the government conducts its budget allocations and implementation.
- The government needs financial support to run their programs and activities, as expressed in APBD and APBN. The commitment of the government to run PUG in the implementation of APBD and APBN would theoretically result in a gender-sensitive budget.
- The implementation of APBN and APBD for people’s welfare should consider the values of justice and equality based on non-discriminative relationship patterns according to social class, religion, cultural group, ethnicity, and sex.
Gender budget also lays its foundation within the governmental processes starting from planning, implementation, and monitoring, up to the evaluation of the budget. More than that, the budget should always be based on an interactive consultation process between the people and the executives and legislative members. Gender budget is an effective tool and strategy to combat poverty since it encourages the government to focus on programs that improve their constituents’ welfare, specifically programs for marginalized groups, of which currently women in poverty seem to be especially disregarded. The gender budget is aimed at reducing the social, economic, political, and gender gap between men and women.
Importantly, it also helps in promoting the accountability of public resource spending, including the public budget, to the constituents especially women who are often marginalized compared to men in decision-making process on the spending of the respective budget.
This research undertaking is based on the problems we have observed that occur during advocacy for gender budget done by NGOs in Indonesia.
WRI used these questions for the basis of this research:
- What is the impact of ‘gender budget advocacy’ done by civil society organizations in Indonesia?
- Why are gender-responsive perspectives necesarry in local budget drafting, specifically to address the needs of women in poverty and other marginalized groups?
- How is the current progress of the gender budget advocacy work?
- How effective is the advocacy done by civil society organizations in encouraging the government to be more responsive to gender-based perspectives, specifically regarding the drafting of gender budgets?
- What are the lessons that can be learned from gender-responsive advocacy and what are the capacity gaps in civil society organization’s in developing gender-responsive strategy and budget?
Research Goals:
- To asses the capabilities of civil society, specifically the women, in influencing budget policy in their respective districts – looking at the level of knowledge and understanding of decision makers (the executives and legislative members) in implementing gender mainstreaming in relation to decision making processes and gender budget.
- To make an accounting of the obstacles in the advocacy of gender budget, specifically in increasing women’s participation in planning and budgeting through Musrembang and how these obstacles influence advocacy results.
- To get a comprehensive picture of the gender-responsive advocacy process done by current civil society organizations and observe the current state of local-level budget drafting, specifically looking at their methods of engagement to account for the needs of women.
- To collect and compile evidence into a published study on the need for local gender budget understanding, urging national and local government to disseminate this to the public.
Research Methodology
This study on the impact of gender-responsive advocacy utilizes qualitative research methodologies, pursuing the goal of understanding the social, cultural, and political challenges faced during the advocacy process. An important tool we used to gather and understand the necessary data were in-depth interviews through the perspective of advocates, including the advocates involved in budget drafting (civil society, local government officials, and legislative members).
Additionally, field observation techniques were also utilized to evaluate the impact of the advocacy program. Data collection was done through in-depth interviews with 10 to 17 interviewees who are involved in gender budget advocacy in their respective research location. The purpose is to understand the dissemination, participation, and social gender analysis knowledge within the process of drafting budgets, and in the monitoring process done by the stakeholders.
The interviewees were chosen based on the categories of the executives, legislative members, NGOs, and NGO beneficiaries. To strengthen the research instruments, the research team also conducts Forum Discussion Group (FGD) to know community groups’ aspirations.
Research Location
The process of field data collection, leading into draft writing, takes approximately four months.
The research is held in six districts namely: Surakarta, Surabaya, Mataram, Kupang, Yogyakarta, and Makassar, chosen based on the consideration that NGO partners in these districts or cities have conducted gender budget advocacy. Additionally, the NGOs in each district have also made connections with government officials at the executive and/or legislative level. Actors engaged in the advocacy program are identified as contributors to the budgeting process, allowing us to specifically identify the impact of certain actions or methods on the program.
Women Research Institute 