engleski

Gender-sensitive budget in Slavonia

Despite the fact that women in Croatia presently constitute a substantial share of highly skilled labour force, gender inequality is still present in the labour market and reflects in lower activity of female labour force, lower employment rates and lower earnings of women in relation to men. This is the result of different roles of men and women in the society due to the fact that women are still disproportionately burdened with unpaid work which makes it difficult for them to balance paid and unpaid work. Due to the fact that the problem of gender inequality has a number of negative economic effects, it is often placed in the focus of macroeconomic policies, among which the fiscal policy, due to its allocation and redistribution effect, particularly the budget as its most important instrument, which should be used for achieving the objective of gender equality. Therefore, the authors point out the importance of implementing gender-sensitive budgeting which, by taking into account the differences between men and women in the budget decision-making process, contributes to greater gender equality. A gender-sensitive budget is used for financing measures designed to facilitate the reconciliation of women’s family and professional life, which allows more intensive involvement of women in the labour market. One of these measures is childcare. In the Republic of Croatia childcare is in direct jurisdiction of local governments ; thus, public spending on childcare can be a good indicator of gender sensitivity of local budgets. The level of satisfaction of needs, and the absolute and relative level of public spending on childcare in the towns and municipalities of the Slavonian region are analysed in the paper in order to determine gender sensitivity of local budgets in the region of Slavonia.

gender equality, gender-sensitive budget, unpaid work, childcare

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