The work of the Civil Association for Equality and Justice focuses The Civil Association for Equality and Justice work focuses on promoting gender justice by providing an added value while continuing to support civil society organizations and activists to increase their impact on eradicating gender inequalities.
GENDER RESPONSIVE BUDGETING
We promote transparency and accessibility of key information on budget allocation and execution to demand efficient and egalitarian policies.
Our work with organizations and activist
Organizations and activists working for gender equity have often kept out of the fiscal policy discussion, given the difficulties and barriers to understanding budgetary data and the lack of adequate participatory mechanisms available. To reverse that situation, we elaborated toolkits for CSO and activists.
Gender-responsive budgeting toolkits for CSO and activist
Budget Analysis with gender perspective.
Guide for the budgetary analysis of policies against gender violence in Argentina
Budget monitor: an online platform to monitor national spending in real-time
It also allows the comparison of data between different periods. Civil society members have used it to obtain information on the policies they are interested in and by journalists to elaborate their reports and articles.
“Budget and Rights” Weeks
Since 2015 we have been analyzing budget allocations for gender policies and working with women’s rights organizations conducting workshops, publishing reports, and carrying out advocacy actions on gender-responsive budgeting at the local and national levels. Out of the training, more than 60 women acquired budget analysis and advocacy tools useful for demanding gender-responsive budgets. Link.
Our work with governments
The sustained dialogue with the Treasury Department and the National Council of Women allowed us to raise awareness of the need to promote a gender-responsive budget, which resulted in greater transparency over the allocation and execution of the National Action Plan Against Gender-based Violence. We also achieved budget increases in other social policies relevant to reducing gender gaps.
At the National Table of Dialogue for the Open Government, we promoted compliance with gender-responsive commitments assumed by the III Open Government Action Plan, which were essential for monitoring policies to eradicate violence.
GENDER RESPONSIVE TAXES
We promote the incorporation of the gender perspective in tax collection.
Policy recommendations for taxes with a gender perspective
In Argentina, women concentrate a lower amount of income -representing 70% of the lowest decile- and are the most affected by the weight of regressive taxes, such as the Value Added Tax.
On the other hand, there are neither evaluations of the impacts of the high tax expenditures (3% of GDP) nor analyses to evaluate whether it generates a positive effect on women. In other words, we do not know if the loss of income that these expenses imply for the government has as a counterpart benefit in the generation of jobs, technology transfer, and inclusion of small companies in productive chains, among other expected objectives of these policies.
For this reason, we analyzed the national tax system and our country’s tax expenditures from a rights-based approach. We also promoted regional and local dialogues to discuss alternatives and demand more equal measures.
At the national level, we promote the Fiscal Work Space for Equity made up of activists and academics. At the regional level, we work together with CSO in the framework of Latin America Tax Expenditure Research, Advocacy and Learning (LATERAL – IBP) and the Principles for Human Rights in Fiscal Policy.
In the coming years, we will continue working with women’s organizations to promote a redistributive tax system with a gender focus.