Cape Town - The Minister of Women, Children and People with Disabilities, Lulu Xingwana, has called for concrete measures to see that part of the national budget is allocated to women, children and people with disabilities.
The country has for some years, through Human Rights Commissioner Pregs Govender's Women's Budget Initiative, held regular analyses on how the budget benefits women, but this had stopped a number of years ago.
At an inaugural luncheon for the Women and Budget Initiative, Xingwana said gender budgets had been introduced over the years in 40 countries around the world, adding that gender budgets were part of the UN-Beijing Platform for Action commitments - which call for an integration of a gender perspective into budgetary decision-making.
This did not mean having to draw up a separate budget, but involved analysing the existing national and provincial budgets to ensure that they allocated enough money to support women - through jobs, contracts, social grants and other measures.
"If you put cash in the hands of a woman you have empowered the family ... because she will not go to the tavern, first stop and bring whatever change [to the family], she will start with bread and milk for the family and in that way we have halved poverty," said Xingwana.
She said budgets could be referred to as gender budgets, gender-sensitive or gender responsive budgets if they include gender issues within government policies, promote greater accountability for the government's commitment to gender inequality and to change current budgeting patterns and policies.
Accountability and compliance on the empowerment of these groups had been adhoc and unenforceable up until now.
One of the measures her department was looking at was tabling the Women's Empowerment and Gender Equality Bill - which will allow the government as well as the private sector to penalise those that do not support or employ women adequately.
Women also had to have serious roles in business and not be delegated to minor roles, she said, pointing out that in mining, women managers and owners only made up 12% of the sector.
Kunyalala Maphisa, the President of Business Women's Association, said women only made up 6% of chief executives and 15% of executives on the boards of big companies - which was not nearly enough.
The Deputy Minister of Finance, Nhlanhla Nene, welcomed Xingwana's call for gender budgeting.
"If we could be assisted in making a thorough analysis on how women can actually benefit, if there are any impediments, let's sit around the table and discuss those," said Nene.
He said women faced much of the brunt of poverty, unemployment and inequality, but that health, education and social grants for the poor - which benefited many women - comprised 59% of the Budget, up from 48% from a decade ago.
The Minister of Environmental and Water Affairs, Edna Molewa, said it was essential for government departments to use their allocated budgets to empower women.
For example, she said her department was looking at how much of the R8.8 billion allocated to Water Affairs - including over R5 billion in infrastructure projects - would be benefit women.
Molewa said 30% of all water and environmental projects put out by her department would now have to be assigned to women.
Gender budgeting was originally developed by feminist economists in Australia in 1984 and
Govender initiated South Africa's gender budgeting in the 1996 budget through the Women's Budget Initiative.
Xingwana and Precious Moloi-Motsepe, co-chair of the Motsepe Foundation - who is spearheading the Women in Budget initiative - told BuaNews that she planned to interact with women from both business and civil society and draw up a report on what the gaps were in the 2012 Budget when it came to supporting women.
The report would be presented during Women's Month in August, and would hopefully help inform Finance Minister Pravin Gordhan on how to draw up next year's budget to ensure it did more to empower and benefit women.
