Debate contribution: Gender-responsive Budgeting

Debate contribution by Ms Paula Bradshaw on 14 January 2025.

MLA

Ms Paula Bradshaw

Party at the time

Alliance Party

Date

14 January 2025

Type

Debate contribution

Business

Opposition Business

Heading

Gender-responsive Budgeting

Assembly identifier

Official Report component 4736800

Read the official Assembly record

Text

I also support the motion. I do not wish to use the brief time that I have to speak about points that have already been made, but there are, broadly, three points on why gender-responsive budgeting is helpful and how it would fit into wider equality work. First, despite significant strides in some cases, there are identifiable areas where we, in Northern Ireland, are further from gender equality than neighbouring jurisdictions. The most obvious of those, which we, of course, hope to tackle effectively as a priority in the Programme for Government and in the Executive Office, is that the scale of violence against women and girls here is considerably worse than in comparable places. Another is the lower rate of participation in the workforce among females, particularly at and after middle age, where there is a marked discrepancy between Northern Ireland and neighbouring jurisdictions. There are, of course, other areas. Secondly, tied to that, there is the absence of a single equality Act in Northern Ireland. That, of course, brings us to the work of the Committee for the Executive Office, which is coming to the end of its inquiry into gaps in equality legislation. There seems to be no doubt that one area of investigation should be into whether equality impact assessments should include gender-responsive budgeting and, potentially, gender equality action plans. It would also be necessary to improve our data gathering to ensure that such assessments can be carried out effectively and with purpose. Thirdly, there is a question about how we ensure that equality and fairness are embedded in policy in the first place. That is not just about equality in a rebalancing sense. Some of you will be aware of the Swedish example that is cited in the work of Caroline Criado Perez, where it was found that policies and practices that were put in place by committees that were dominated by men had led to snow clearing taking place on roads that were used predominantly by men, often ring roads and roads that led to factories and offices. However, roads that were more commonly used by women, notably roads to schools and care centres, were not prioritised. Footpaths and cycle paths were cleared last. That led to a scenario in which 69% of those injured in winter pedestrian accidents on Swedish roads were women because of the roads that they commonly used. Bear in mind that the roads to the locations that women were likely to want to access were not prioritised for snow clearance and the fact that they were less likely to have access to a car in the first place. Once the authorities switched that around, clearing footpaths and cycle paths first and leaving the ring roads to a later stage of the process, overall casualties in wintertime fell by half and the gender imbalance amongst victims disappeared. In other words, we should not just look at the dry bureaucratic process: it is about how we develop and implement policy from the outset and the practical outcomes of that policy.

509 words. Text as published by the Northern Ireland Assembly.

Assessment

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Assessed 21 October 2026 at 11:50 UTC by jev-1.13.0 (requested as typesafe/jev) under rubric 2026.10-r9, methodology 1.9.

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