Budget to take gender analysis into consideration
When Finance Minister Bill Morneau delivered his fall economic statement, one sentence caught the attention of a select group of people — mainly women.
“To ensure that the government continues to deliver real and meaningful change for all Canadians, it will submit Budget 2017, and all future budgets, to more rigorous analysis by completing and publishing a gender-based analysis of budgetary measures,” said the Nov. 1 statement.
That caused excitement for those whose work touches on issues affecting women and girls. They are now anxiously awaiting the results of the commitment.
The idea behind genderbased analysis is to think how a policy might affect men and women in different ways, along with taking age, income, culture, ethnicity and other intersecting factors into account. If the analysis reveals one gender would experience disproportionately negative impacts, policymakers have the opportunity to reshape things or otherwise mitigate those effects.
Isabella Bakker, a political scientist at York University who has researched gender budgeting, said the process is good for the economy.
“There’s a lot of economic good sense to doing a genderbased analysis of budgets, because basically what you’re doing is targeting your policies more effectively,” she said.
There are many different models, but one example of what might be included would be a look at how a tax measure could impact men and women differently based on the fact a higher percentage of women do not earn taxable income.
Ottawa committed to using gender-based analysis in 1995, but the auditor general revealed last year that relatively few departments and agencies were using it to its full potential — or at all.