Workshop: Gender Budgeting in the Work of the Departments
Monitoring Improvement of Quality of Life and Status of Women
16 November 2007
Meeting Summary
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Meeting report
JOINT MONITORING COMMITTEE ON IMPROVEMENT OF QUALITY OF LIFE AND STATUS
OF WOMEN
16 November 2007
WORKSHOP: GENDER BUDGETING IN THE WORK OF THE DEPARTMENTS
Chairperson: Ms M Morutoa (ANC)
Documents handed out:
How can annual
reports help in ensuring gender responsive budgeting?
Programme 2: Visible
Policing
Programme 3: Detective
Services
Audio recording
of meeting
SUMMARY
The workshop took place in the form of a brief presentation on the
monitoring of the Annual Reports and financial statements of Departments, to
assess their budgeting and work from a gender perspective. The possible
questions to be asked from budgets were outlined. The Committee then embarked
on group work, looking at various extracts of the financial report of the
Department of Safety and Security, and assessing them in terms of their
relevance and understandability. Members were pleased with the exercise and
acknowledged that it broadened their views of the type of questions to ask when
reviewing budgets and reports. Other issues raised in discussion included
health related issues affecting women, the lack of commitment by departments,
whether special budget allocations should be made to women, or to
gender-related issues, whether there should be a women’s ministry, trafficking
in women, and the need to involve the Departments of Justice and Safety and
Security in a meeting on arrests of women and other gender related issues.
MINUTES
Ms Debbie Budlender, Specialist Researcher, noted that the purpose of the
workshop was using annual reports to monitor budgets from a gender
perspective. She said that there were
five steps in the process: to describe the situation of women and men, and
girls and boys in the sector; to assess whether the government programme
addressed the gender gaps and issues; to allocate adequate budget for the
gender sensitive programmes; to monitor whether and how the money was spent
through the financial reports and to evaluate whether the money had changed the
negative aspects described in step one.
The focus of the workshop would be on the financial report of the Department of
Safety and Security, as Gender Based Violence (GBV) was a focus point.
She noted that this Department received a large budget, of which Visible
Policing formed 44%. Crime prevention amounted to 89% of Visible Policing.
Under the heading “Contact Crimes,” the Department did not mention rape, and
this was an indication of there being no gender-related measurable objectives.
Detective Services amounted to 16% of the total budget. General Investigation
had 40% of sexual offences against children detected and 30% of those were
taken to court. 42% of sexual offences against adult women were detected and
40% of those were taken to court.
Ms Budlender said that there were questions to ask from that budget, including:
-
-How many of the reported achievements related to events. The Department had 16
days of activism against women and child abuse, but the Committee should
question what happened during the rest of the year.
-How many of the reported achievements related to development policy documents.
-How many of the reported achievements related to actual delivery.
-Whether some of the groups or areas were left out
-Whether the department had explained under-delivery
Discussion
The Chairperson thanked Ms Budlender for drawing these aspects to the
attention of the Committee. She noted that when termination of pregnancy, a
health issue, was being discussed, the Committee was concerned about women, who
were the child bearers. This indicated a need for this Committee to work with
the Department on Health. Another health-related issue was how TB would affect
women, who had no choice but to look after TB patients who were their children.
The Chairperson said that the document presented encouraged the Committee to
ask questions in Parliament.
Mr F Maserumule (ANC) commented that he did not know what more could be done
after so many documents had been written on gender. He said that there was lack
of commitment despite training given to the policemen, as stated in a recent
meeting with SAPS. He thought that this
Committee and various organisations perhaps needed to get around the
ideas of implementing all the detail stated in documents. The Committee could
not simply rely on people undertaking their jobs because they were paid to do
so.
Ms B Ntuli (ANC) asked whether there was any department that allocated money
specifically for women. She then asked if there was any way of making sure that
there was money allocated for women in all departments.
The Chairperson commented that no governing body was saying anything about the
issue of prostate cancer, as it was perceived that men do not talk about their
problems.
Ms Budlender responded that she was weary of special budget allocations for
women within departments. She said that it was better to have special
allocation for gender-related issues and then a breakdown would be given of how
many were women and how many were men. Her reasoning was that the main
allocations ended up going to men. In the Department of Education, there was no
special amount for women because that department did have special projects on
gender equality. However, the actual gender allocation was disappearing.
Ms Budlender commented that reproductive health was a very important issue for
women, and it went beyond HIV/AIDS. She added that she had wanted to use the
Department of Health’s financial report for the workshop but it was not on the
internet.
Ms S Rwexana (ANC) asked for the presenter’s personal opinion on a women’s
ministry.
Ms Budlender responded that she did not think that there should be a women’s
ministry, based on her experience of working in various countries. She said
that the Office on the Status of Women (OSW) had not done the work it was
supposed to have done, and that was where the problem lay. She added that
women’s ministry was meant to push everyone to be gender sensitive, but then it
would start becoming more like a project ministry than a policy ministry. She
commented that South Africa had good documents with sufficient information, but
the main thrust was where to look in those documents and what questions to ask
about them.
Ms B Ntuli (ANC) asked whether having a women’s ministry would help departments
have gender related measurable objectives.
Ms Budlender responded that one ministry could not tell another what to do. She
said that the OSW was meant to work at this focal point but the structures,
although in place, were not working. She did not think that changing the
structure would solve the problem.
Mr Maserumule said that every year South Africa produced knowledge and skilled
individuals but did not deploy them to the relevant posts, and perhaps an audit
should be conducted on this issue.
Ms Budlender responded that maybe the problem was with people not asking the
right questions. This Committee had the power to ask questions that would
pressurise the departments to take things seriously. Government needed
questions from a powerful body.
The Chairperson commented that the issue of a women’s ministry was a sensitive
one and that the Committee had heard from OSW that their budget had been
reduced. The Committee needed to make a follow-up on that.
Group work
The Committee did some group work, using extracts of the Department of
Safety and Security’s financial report.
Ms Budlender noted that departments would try to avoid disclosing certain
information by not stating the numbers, whereas target and actual numbers
should correlate. She noted that an extract reading: “Initiatives established
at 169 high contact crime stations,” did not give target figures.
She emphasised that departments should give comparisons for at least two years.
The statement: “Rape and attempted rape totalled 19 629.” did not tell the
reader if this figure was high or low because there were no comparatives. She
encouraged the Committee to always ask whether what they were reading made
sense.
Ms Budlender noted that it was good to focus on largest problems in a financial
report, but that other areas should not be ignored. For example, the Department
had planned to decrease high-contact crimes by 7%. Rape had decreased by 5.2%,
which was below the target of 7%. The Committee should note where improvements
occurred and where there was no improvement.
The Chairperson asked how the issue of trafficking was classified and located.
Ms Budlender responded that South Africa did not currently have any law against
trafficking of adults. It was contained only in the Children’s Bill.
The Chairperson suggested that the Committee put the issue of trafficking on
their agenda for the forthcoming year.
Ms Budlender agreed, as the South African Law Reform Commission had been
working for too long on the matter.
Ms M Nxumalo (ANC) said that in a recent case, an ex-policeman had been charged
for offences, but was always given information on the police movements on his
investigations.
Ms Ntuli was concerned whether there were any connections between detectives
and criminals, because there are far too many dockets getting lost.
Ms Budlender responded that there were various problems with detectives that
could not simply be solved by looking at Annual Reports and then asking the
relevant questions.
Ms Ntuli asked whether sexual offences against men were included in the term
“rape.”
Ms Budlender responded that the pending Sexual Offences Bill would change the
definitions, to provide that there would be a charge for raping a man, not
simply indecent assault.
Ms Budlender said that the purpose of having gender sensitive reports was to
try to get more gender related targets in budgets and in Annual Reports, sex
desegregation of achievements (for example, were people arrested and convicted
male or female) and timely production of Annual Reports by all departments.
Ms Rwexana said that it was mostly women who were used for drug trafficking and
who were then jailed in foreign prisons. Many women were pregnant and gave
birth in these prisons. She asked whether there were statistics of these
crimes.
Ms Budlender responded that the Committee should aim to see whether arrested
people were men or women. The Department of Safety and Security did not
currently give such statistics.
Ms Ntuli commented that the police could make all the arrests but it also
depended on how the judicial system dealt with the issue. She was not sure
whether the numbers of lawyers superceded the police. She asked what the
Committee could do in their workshops to deal with the two departments working
together, in deciding whether there was a good case.
Ms Budlender responded that the idea was to call both departments together to
the Committee. Such a meeting would not necessarily solve the problem but it
would start the discussion.
The meeting was adjourned.
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