Tifa Asrianti, Jakarta – The government will implement what it calls a "gender-responsive budget" in 27 ministries and institutions and 10 pilot provinces next year, according to the nation's development agency.
The policy is part of the 2010-2014 Midterm National Development Plan to create gender-responsive governance, as mandated by a 2000 Presidential Instruction on gender mainstreaming in national development. This includes translating the government's commitment to upholding gender quality into budgetary policies in which female and male citizens are equally involved in development.
The ministries and institutions to be involved in the 2012 gender-responsive budget are, among others, the Cooperatives and Small and Medium Enterprises Ministry, the Defense Ministry, the Forestry Ministry as well as the Supreme Court and the National Land Agency. The provinces are East Java, Central Java, Yogyakarta, Banten, West Java, North Sumatra, Bangka-Belitung, Riau Islands, West Kalimantan and Lampung.
"The Home Ministry is expected to play an active role as a driver, especially for the legal basis and instrument drafting of the gender-responsive budget in the regions," Sanjoyo, director of demography, women's empowerment and child protection at the National Planning Development Board (Bappenas), said.
He said that the board, along with the Finance Ministry, the Home Ministry and the Women's Empowerment and Child Protection Ministry, was to draft a national strategy for the gender-responsive budget for the central government and local administrations.
Currently, Bappenas is evaluating the gender-responsive budget pilot project applied in seven ministries and institutions this year. The seven ministries and institutions have adopted two versions of the gender-oriented budgeting program: service delivery and capacity development and advocation.
The service delivery ministries are the Education and Culture Ministry, the Public Works Ministry, the Health Ministry and the Agriculture Ministry. The capacity development and advocating ministries and institutions are the finance, women's empowerment and child protection and the national development planning ministries.
Sanjoyo said that his office had given recommendations to the ministries and provinces to prioritize budgeting for activities that could benefit women.
"For example, when there is a region that has low participation of girls in education, we recommend that they be granted scholarships. We also monitor the budgeting process, to make sure that it really is responsive to the problems in the society."
Syamsiah Ahmad, head of Indonesian Center for Women in Politics, said that before applying gender-responsive budgeting, the government should understand what kind of problems they wanted to address.
"We should cooperate with statistic agencies to see where the gaps are, such as in education participation or maternal mortality rate, conduct analysis of why it happens and allocate the budget to respond to the problem," she said.
Data from the National Statistics Agency showed that Indonesia's Gender Empowerment Index score in 2004 was 0.597 and 0.635 in 2009. National Labor Force Survey (Sakernas) recorded that the rate of open unemployment of women decreased to 8.23 percent in 2010 from 13.7 percent in 2006.
The number of women holding public positions has increased. In judicatory institutions, there are 1,869 female judges, or 23.4 percent of the 7,974 judges nationwide, and 6 female justices, accounting for 15.4 percent of the 39 justices.
In the House of Representative 11.6 percent of legislators sitting in 2004 were female, and 17.9 percent in 2009, while in the Regional Representative Council, 19.8 percent of counselors were female in 2004 and 27.3 percent in 2009.