Is the budget of the city of Zagreb gender responsive?

Abstract

The Gender Equality Commission under the auspices of the City of Zagreb, in cooperation with the scientific community, raises the question of the role of the budget in solving the problem of gender inequality. Although in practice gender budgeting initiatives often start outside the system, implementation is not possible without support within the system. Therefore, in order to sensitize the future key leaders of this process to the need to respect the differences between men and women when making decisions about the collection and especially the spending of public funds, analysis of the budget of the City of Zagreb from a gender perspective is conducted. Due to the centralization of public finances in the Republic of Croatia and the fact that most of the public revenues of the City of Zagreb are determined by regulations at the central level, in the paper the focus is on the gender analysis of the public expenditures of the City of Zagreb. The analysis covers city policies in the areas of education, social welfare, demography, entrepreneurship, and sports. The main limitation of the analysis is that the programs and activities were analysed exclusively on the basis of publicly available. The results of the analysis show that the City of Zagreb already has a large number of measures and activities that form the basis for or contribute to gender-responsive budgeting. Although conducted analysis has certain limitations, it fulfils the main purpose of raising awareness of the role of the budget in improving gender equality in the city of Zagreb.