Gender responsive budgeting: A study for the effectiveness of municipalities

Today, gender responsive budgeting has become more important with be seen gender equality as the basic condition of ensuring equal participation in political, socio-economic and cultural life for democracy, justice and equality. Local administrations, especially municipalities, are seen as the main actors in the implementation of gender responsive budgeting in terms of providing services and making gender responsive plans and policies, due to ensuring gender equality, proximity to individuals and their service duties. In this direction the purpose of the study, at the local level in Turkey in municipalities that have the potential to best implement gender responsive budgeting is to evaluate the effectiveness of gender responsive budgeting. In the study, firstly budgeting studies and practices for gender responsive in the world and Turkey are examined by drawing the theoretical framework of gender responsive budgeting. Afterwards, a field research was place given performed in Eskişehir province was included to measure the applicability and effectiveness of gender responsive budgeting in municipalities. As a result of the study, the gender responsive budget demand of citizens residing in Eskişehir is at a "very high" level with an average of 4.2224. However, it is seen that the implementation level of gender responsive budgeting by municipalities in Eskişehir is at a "medium" level with an average of 3.3849. Accordingly, the difference between the demand and the current situation is 0.8375. The fact that this value is between 0-1, generally indicates that the gender responsive budget studies is effective in meeting the demand in Eskişehir case.