BUDGET IT · Building Gender Equality through gender budgeting for Institutional Transformation

Building Gender+ Equality Through Gender+ Budgeting For Institutional Transformation (Budget-It) is a three-year project designed to use gender+ budgeting to transform institutions to advance inclusive gender+ equality and enhance the reputation, inclusiveness, and research excellence of the widening countries of Bosnia, Serbia and Turkey assisted by leading university counterparts in Italy and Spain. Budget-It will use of gender+ budgeting as a tool to move past the current stagnation surrounding gender+ equality. GEPs are often implemented without the required commitment of resources and the allocation of resources often remaining unexamined with institutional budgets reinforcing gender+ inequalities including inequities among women. The integration of gender+ budgeting into GEPs will ensure resources are distributed in an equitable and intersectional way. Partners will identify at least three intersections so that GEPs are both tailored and inclusive. By the end of the project, partner institutions will have produced an integrated, inclusive gender+ equality plan and gender+ budget (GEP-GB). The consortium, five universities and four municipalities, will ensure the transfer of theory to practice and for knowledge to move beyond the walls of academia to create greater institutional and societal transformation. Municipalities, through the provision of services, impact the lives of many thousands and as such provides the opportunity to create a wider space in the public sphere for gender+ equality.All three of the project’s widening country partners struggle with rising tides of anti-gender+ and ethno-religious nationalism. The slow mainstreaming of these anti-gender+ and nationalist discourses pose a threat to gains made towards equality and Budget-It represents an opportunity to reinforce and support institutionalisation and implementation of intersectional gender+ equality measures including a gender+ budget to ensure equity in the use of resources.