PHILANTHROPY
Half of surveyed governments tag gender spending, three test who actually pays
The Open Budget Survey 2025, run by the International Budget Partnership, asked for the first time whether governments use gender-responsive budgeting tools. Roughly half of the 82 countries surveyed report using at least one, mostly front-end instruments such as gender budget tagging and gender-responsive budget statements. Only three countries, Norway, South Africa and Benin, conduct distributional assessments of tax and welfare policies.
Lilianna Ziedins and Priyanka Samy of the International Budget Partnership describe a reform that advanced to the point of visibility and halted there: priorities are classified and published, while the back-end tools that would test whether spending changes outcomes remain rare, and evidence of impact seldom reaches the Executive Budget Proposal. For funders, the leverage sits in the unfinished half, where recurrent public budgets measured in billions are decided.
Source: Alliance Magazine · September 14, 2026