The national coordinator of the 100 Women lobby group, Mrs. Felicia Onibon, has emphasised the need for gender responsive budgeting, saying “this will promote gender equity and equality sensitively in Nigeria.”
Onibon, stated this in Abuja during a workshop on Gender Responsive Budgeting Framework for Ministries, Departments and Agencies (MDAs) organised by the group in collaboration with the ministry of women affairs.
Represented by one of its board members Irene Ugba, she said it became pertinent to train gender desk officers on gender mainstreaming and gender responsive budgeting, stressing that it was hight time for an all inclusive budget that captures needs of women, Persons with Disabilities (PWDs) and all vulnerable people.
“Gone are the days of just making general budgeting, we need to look at those key things that women need and other vulnerable groups needs to be able to achieve their goals.
“Budgeting for gender response is important because women’s needs are different from men’s needs. What a woman needs to achieve her goal is different from what a man needs. And in other to achieve equity and equality, we must take those things into cognisance. So what a woman needs to achieve her goals is totally different from what a man needs, and it should be captured in the budget, ” she said.
According to her, the women group lobbies, encourage women to participate in politics and trains political parties on giving more space to women to participate.
Another Board member Mrs. Adetayo Erinle, said the increased gender budgeting would aide in addressing discrimination, biasnesses and other forms of violence against women and children.
On his part, Mr Edo Ekata, representing the FMWA, said advocacy and capacity building is key to gender mainstreaming, inclusivness and equity.
” Trainings are channels to communicate to management
Each government’s have their priority but it is our job to try to make the government through channels like this to make gender budgeting a priority.
” We must keep building our capacity to keep advocacy for gender response budgeting,” he said.
Ms Ijeoma Echeruo, Gender and Development Consultant, stressed the need for political will on gender responsive budgeting to end GBV and improve nation’s economy.
“Unless we have the political will to accept the fact and understand how women are relevant to economic growth, we miss the opportunity to incorporate gender into our budgeting processes.
One of the participants Josephine Erhagbowa, from the Gender Desk Unit, Federal Ministry of Water Resources, lauded the concept of gender mainstreaming saying it aims at reducing disparities by focusing on equality or inequity.
