Setting the Gender Agenda
Standing behind a podium in the Harris School of Public Policy Studies, Ella Gera clicked her way through a presentation dotted with bullet points about gender budgeting—not to mention a few feminist cartoons.According to Gera, a leading women’s rights activist and former executive director of The Israel Women’s Network, gender budgeting is the process of including gender equality among the many priorities policymakers must consider when creating laws that leave no one at a disadvantage. That extra step is crucial, Gera says, arguing that policymakers need to stop thinking of all citizens as the same—that equality sometimes requires factoring in unique perspectives and gender-specific needs.
“[Policy can] only promote gender equality or exacerbate gender inequality,” she said during the lecture on February 25.
The event, “Gender Budgeting: A Tool For Better Government,” was sponsored by Women in Public Policy (WIPP) and the Committee on International Affairs and Public Policy, two student-led organizations at the Harris School.
Gera explained how she experienced the challenges of gender budgeting firsthand while serving as deputy mayor of Kfar Shmaryahu, a town near Tel Aviv, from 1998 to 2004. One example during her tenure involved special funding for elderly day centers that, on the surface, seemed to offer gender-neutral services. Upon closer examination, however, Gera found that women in Israel statistically have longer lifespans than men and are better able to care for their husbands at home than vice versa. Instead, widowed or ill wives were more likely to require full 24-hour nursing home care, she explained, and government funding needed to take that consideration into account.
This mindset has found footholds around the world, Gera says. In 1984, Australia was the first government in the world to launch a gender budgeting initiative to significantly increase in spending in areas important to women. Between 1985 and 1996, federal assistance to families with children rose 27 percent, while assistance to the aged rose 24 percent under this initiative. There was also a five-fold increase in childcare facilities for working women during that time. These are all developments that every government should be working towards, Gera insists.
Melissa Howard, a member of WIPP who coordinated the lecture, found Gera’s message applicable to her future career. She hopes to work in the budgeting office of the City of San Francisco after graduation and says the lecture opened her eyes to a new perspective on policymaking. “Looking back, this might not have been something that occurred to me had I not [attended] this event,” she says.
“[Gender budgeting] has to be done or nothing will change,” adds another student from the Chicago Booth School of Business who attended the event.
Gera says it’s not always easy. Out of four bullet points about how to execute successful gender budgeting—Know Your Enemy, Teach Others, Do Your Research, and Take Initiative—she seems to hold the final step in highest regard. Nothing will change, she insists, if you’re not willing to be a pest sometimes.
“Women are like tea bags,” one of her final slides quoted Eleanor Roosevelt. “You never know how strong she is until she gets into hot water.”
By Katie Tu
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