The objective of this research is to examine the successes of the gender budgeting system and identify its weaknesses in order to suggest further improvements for the future in light of its tenth anniversary.
To achieve this goal we examine the issues of the selection criteria for target projects and the process through which they are applied, review the overall gender budgeting process of a select few ministries, then conduct a quantitative analysis measuring the effectiveness of the performance management of targeted projects using performance reports and gender budget settlement of accounts for the Fiscal Year 2015 (Section Ⅱ). Next, based on the results of our analysis, we present a plan to effectively improve the problems of the current gender budgeting system (Section Ⅲ). Last, we propose a model operation plan from the perspective of performance-based budgeting aimed at achieving gender equality. The most pressing issues of the current system identified in this research paper are as follows. First, since an objective and standard criteria for selecting target projects has yet to be established, issues about the validity of the selected projects are frequently brought up. Secondly, as the effectiveness of performance management of the target projects is low, the fact that many of these projects did not substantially contribute to improving gender equality or that it was difficult to confirm the level of contribution have been highly criticized. Therefore, this research paper seeks a way to establish rational criteria for selecting target projects for gender budgeting in order to differentiate which projects performance must continue to be managed to achieve gender equality and which do not. Furthermore, we propose a plan to effectively manage the performance of target projects so that they actually achieve their goal of improving gender equality. The plans to improve gender budgeting presented in this research are as follows.
First, we advise that gender budgeting be harmonized with performance-based budgeting and gender impact assessment in the long-run. Projects with the goal of reducing gender disparity should be linked with performance-based budgeting, including them in the performance management process of general budgetary programs so that they receive performance evaluation and feedback. Projects that are designed to have an influence on gender equality should be evaluated on their indirect effect on gender equality through gender impact assessments, the results of which should be reflected in the execution of projects, search for new projects, and feedback after execution, through official procedure, which needs to be established. Secondly, while the method of selecting target projects for gender budgeting at the sub-project level should be continued in the short-term, we determine that the current selection criteria for target projects of automatically re-selecting the previous year s target projects should be discontinued since in the case of budgetary projects, there is a high proportion of continued projects and it is difficult to evaluate their effect on gender equality on an annual basis. As specific criteria for selecting projects with the goal of reducing gender disparity we present the following three standards: a project associated with carrying out one of the seven tasks presented in the Basic Plan for Gender Equality (a project that is a target project for the current Basic Plan for Gender Equality), a project that targets women or includes preferential treatment measures for women, or a project that provides protection to disadvantaged groups that are either predominantly men or women. Projects that apply to any of the following four are considered as projects designed to have an influence on gender equality::