School of Social Sciences, Universiti Sains Malaysia, 11800 Minden, Penang, Malaysia. E-mail: This email address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it.. Tel: 604- 653 3427 (O); 012-265 6658 (H/P).  

Received April, 2015; Accepted May, 2015  

This is an exploratory study on the initiative to introduce Gender-Responsive Budgeting (GRB) at the local government level in Malaysia, based on the case of the Penang city council or Majlis Perbandaran Pulau Pinang (MPPP). The GRB approach emphasises that government expenditure and policies affect women and men in society (i.e. in terms of the gender impact of government expenditure on public goods and services) as well as the government sector itself (i.e. in terms of the adherence to the principle of equal employment opportunity for government employees). This study focuses on two issues: firstly, to map the availability of sex-disaggregated data in MPPP as well as the extent to which gender issues are incorporated in budget planning and secondly, to do a gender analysis for selected services that are provided by MPPP by using the public expenditure benefit incidence analysis (BIA) method. The findings of this study are used as a basis to suggest ways in which MPPP can move forward in implementing GRB in terms of improving its data collection and performing gender analysis.    

 

Key words: Gender-responsive budgeting, local government, benefit incidence analysis 

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