Reflections on the politics and context of gender budgets: A feminist perspective

Abstract

Budgets appear to be a neutral accounting technique but they need to be deconstructed to disclose political power relationships and open their apparently rigid framework. The political and analytical shift makes it possible to extend the macro political economy to include unpaid domestic work, to expand the notion of standard of living into a multidimensional space, and to include social welfare expenditure in a circular reproductive flow as part of what is necessary to enable men and women to live, work, and relate in a social context. This inclusion of real lives changes the concept of time and place, to be defined in relation to the complexity of the human body and its relational necessities and social norms.