Botswana, like the rest of the world, is observing 16 Days of Activism Against Gender Violence that runs from 25 November to 10 December.While it is commendable that the government and its partners are observing these 16 days to highlight violence that is visited upon women, we should not forget about another form of violence; economic violence that is manifest in biased allocative choices. Thus, this installment discusses economic violence and advocates for Gender Responsive Budgeting (GRB).Public allocative choices are made through budgets and, to this end, same are important public policy documents as amply instanced by Hyde (2002:1) asserting that “budgeting is the single most important decision-making process in any governmental organisation”. Thus, the public budget unambiguously reflects government’s policy toward the economy. Hence, by scrutinising a public budget, one can get a sense of the government’s priorities. Therefore, Ms. Pregs Govender, a former South African parliamentarian and pioneer of the Woman Budget Initiative, could not have put it better when she said, “if you want to see which way a country is headed, look at the country’s budget and how it allocates resources for women and children”. (Fleshman, 2002:4).Importantly, a traditional public budget, defined as a document that contains words and figures relating to proposed expenditure (Wildavsky 1984) does not distinguish between class groups. Thus, it does not mention men, boys, women and girls and, therefore, gives scant attention to group differences and different impacts of public expenditure on the said groups.Simply put, traditional budgets are assimilationist in orientation; that is, it is assumed that the budget will address issues across the gender divide. Hence, in an attempt to formulate gender-neutral budgets, governments are, in fact, crafting gender-blind instruments (see Elson 2002). In the process, and as borne out by countless research; e.g., World Bank (2001), Young (1993), Jain (2005) etc, women and girls suffer gender discrimination that manifests itself on the economic front.Notably, the preceding problem is systemic and, therefore, there are no easy solutions. All the same, GRB is offered as one of the solutions as argued by some researchers (e.g., Sharp & Broomhill 2002), gender activists and international organisations (World Bank, the United Nations Development Fund for Women and the Commonwealth Secretariat).GRB serves many purposes and, to this end, the Commonwealth Secretariat (2002:2) lists some of the following:improving the allocation of resources to women;
(ii) supporting gender mainstreaming in macroeconomics;
enhancing the linkages between economic and social policy outcomes; and
tracking public expenditure against gender and development policy commitments.
Botswana has ratified many gender-related protocols; the most important ones being the UN Convention on the Elimination of All Forms of Discrimination Against Women (CEDAW) in 1996, the Millennium Declaration (see particularly Millennium Development Goal 3 on gender) and the Southern African Development Community [SADC] Gender and Development Declaration of 1997.
Through the declaration, the government committed itself to set a 30 percent quota for women representation in local authorities, party structures and National Assembly by the year 2005 (however, this is yet to be achieved). Subsequent to the above, SADC crafted the SADC Protocol on Gender and Development, which was ratified by all but three countries (Botswana, Mauritius and Malawi) at a meeting in Johannesburg on 17 August 2008.The protocol is composed of 43 articles and articles 15 (1) and (2) specifically address gender issues. The latter purposely calls for GRB when it states that ‘state parties shall ensure gender sensitive and responsive budgeting at the micro and macro levels, including tracking, monitoring and evaluation (SADC, 2008:12).’
To conclude, violence in any form is abhorrent and we thus hold that gender unresponsiveness in public budget allocation is a pervasive form of violence. Hence, there is a need to do the following; ratify the SADC Gender Protocol to institutionalise GRB, and establish a Ministry of Gender and intensify gender training for planners and politicians.

















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