Determinants of Gender Budgeting Practices: Evidence from Municipal Governments in South Korea

In recent decades, many countries have introduced gender budgeting initiatives both at the national and subnational levels. Gender budgeting aims to enhance the gender responsiveness of government spending by integrating gender-disaggregated analyses and gender equality outcome targets into the budgetary process. Although gender budgeting has been practiced for decades, empirical studies on the topic (including on the potential determinants of gender budgeting practices) have been scarce. This paper exploits a unique data set from South Korea. In that country, a gender budgeting system was uniformly introduced to local governments in 2013, but the extent of its use was left to the discretion of municipalities. Drawing from the gender budgeting statements of 66 municipal governments during 2013–2018, I find significant variations in the amount and types of gender budgeting across municipalities. I further find that the amount and types of gender budgeting are significantly influenced by political factors, institutional support, pro-equality climates of civil society, and the socioeconomic and fiscal conditions of the municipalities. Overall, the results suggest that, both inside- and outside-government conditions that are conducive to budgetary reform facilitate the implementation of gender budgeting.