Australia is in danger of being outpaced by its peers on an issue that goes to the heart of its equality policies, economic performance and democratic accountability: gender‑responsive budgeting. Around the world, governments are hard‑wiring gender analysis into budgets to ensure public spending reflects the lived realities of their populations. Yet Australia – once a pioneer – has allowed its early leadership to erode.
As International Women’s Day approaches, I find myself circling back to this same topic that I raised in The Interpreter two years ago: why has Australia failed to legislate a practice it helped to invent?
Budgets are not neutral instruments. They shape lives by determining access to childcare, healthcare, education and even safe public spaces. When governments fail to apply a gender lens, spending decisions risk ignoring the distinct needs of different genders. That blindness is not harmless; it produces inequitable policies, undermines productivity and limits women’s participation in the workforce.
Australia: From global leader to laggard
Australia was once a global pioneer. In 1984, it introduced the Women’s Budget Statement, requiring every department to report on how its policies and spending affected women. This initiative was rigorous, detailed and world-leading.
But its flaw was structural: gender-responsive budgeting was not required in law. When political priorities shifted, the practice faded. By 2013, the federal Women’s Budget Statement disappeared altogether, leaving civil society – specifically the National Foundation for Australian Women – to carry the load voluntarily, with limited (if any) access to government data or expertise.
Some trailblazing nations are now integrating gender‑responsive budgeting with climate finance.
Today, two states in Australia have taken steps that the Commonwealth has not. Tasmania passed a motion in 2022 to embed GRB in its processes. Victoria introduced legislation in 2024. These developments are significant, but they underscore the absence of a federal mandate.
Why law matters
My latest research shows that globally, more than half of OECD countries have statutory provisions for GRB. Spain has published an annual gender budgeting report alongside its national budget since 2008 – because the law requires it. Austria went even further, embedding GRB in its constitution in 2009.
Countries that were among the earliest to practice GRB have come to accept the need for a legislative mandate. While Canada first started practising GRB in the 1990s, it introduced a law mandating its practice in 2018. South Africa’s Women’s Budget Initiative was first started in 1995, influencing Uganda, Tanzania and Rwanda, all of which followed suit. It took until 2019 for the South African government to develop a national framework.
Meanwhile, in Australia – once the trailblazer – historical data, technical expertise and good governance practices may disappear at the whim of a change of leadership without having to go through parliamentary debate. That’s the difference legislation can make.
What difference does GRB make?
Gender-responsive budgeting delivers real change – from small to big. In the 1980s, GRB exposed inequalities that would otherwise have remained hidden – for example, the extent to which government programs failed to address the specific needs of Indigenous women, or the vastly lower investment in supporting workers affected by restructuring in Australia’s highly feminised textiles, clothing and footwear industries compared to the male‑dominated motor vehicle sector.
A federal legislative mandate today would require gender impact assessments for all budget measures, annual reporting on gender and diversity outcomes and transparent accountability mechanisms across Treasury and line agencies. It would, for instance, make visible the degree to which the government’s paid parental leave scheme – and the funding to back it – remain inadequate to achieve a sharing of care between parents. Better data and machine-assisted analysis could make GRB even cheaper and more effective than in the 1980s.
International practice offers further guidance. South Korea’s National Finance Law obliges the government to evaluate whether women and men equally receive the benefits of the budget and the ways in which the budget will enhance gender equality – a blunt tool, but one that signals ambition. The Philippines mandates that 5% of the national budget be allocated to gender programs. Uruguay requires budget analysis that reflects the ways gender intersects with race, disability and socio‑economic status. None are perfect models, but Australia can learn from them all.
Timing matters. Some trailblazing nations are now integrating gender‑responsive budgeting with climate finance. Rwanda’s gender-responsive climate budgeting, introduced in 2022–23, has produced a climate change budget statement explicitly recognising how women farmers are disproportionately affected by increasingly unpredictable rainfall patterns.
The objective is not bureaucracy for its own sake. It is fairer policymaking – budgets that reflect the lived realities of all Australians and in ways that can actually help to close gender gaps.
Will Australia lead again – or keep lagging behind? The answer lies in the next budget cycle – and whether, this International Women’s Day, the call for Australia to make it a legislative requirement is heeded.
This article is based on Prof. Vijeyarasa’s latest research published in Rewriting the Rules: Gender-Responsive Lawmaking for the Twenty-First Century, University of California Press (2026), Open Access: (Read online or download free)
