Gender sensitive budgeting in local government

Women, at the end of long years of their struggles gained legal and real status and the placement of human, right at the center of development operations, which started with the foundation of economic growth, women oriented politics and services both extended and began rising to the surface in different forms. When all those studies turned out unsuccessful in establishing the gender equality where this was proven with especially the international reports and indicators; the approach of gender mainstreaming which comes to mean placement of gender equality view into entire plans, programs, politics and documents at every level and stage was developed. One of the most important tools of this approach is Gender Budgeting (GB). Participatory budget approach application models which are one of the methods of GB are being encountered at a national level despite the fact that it is less in number locally and regionally in Turkey even though it started in years even more recent in different countries and regions. In this study, the applicability of GB as a tool of mainstreaming by starting at the level of local authorities to municipalities was analyzed in Izmir Municipalities with a feminist point of view by using quantitative and qualitative research methods. Plans of the municipalities which executed Strategic Planning was evaluated with the content analysis method in terms of their sensitivity towards gender. Gender equality awareness of decision makers in municipalities were researched with a municipality oriented survey. Within this scope, the level of gender equality awareness of Urla Municipality decision makers, since the Urla Municipality prepared its year 2016 budget by using the GB tool, their approaches to GB and their experiences in this process were evaluated by the use of in-depth interview method.