Abstract 
of the speech at the conference on “Gender Budgets, Financial Markets, Financing for Development”, February 19th and 20th 2002 at the Heinrich-Boell Foundation in Berlin.

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"First of all, let me briefly introduce myself. I am a sociologist and, for nearly 20 years, I’ve been involved in feminist organisations, university women’s studies centres and international political institutions to conduct studies on gender equality issues. With the time, I used to develop an expertise on public policies evaluation, with a strong emphasis on gender impact assessment, especially in the field of employment and social policies. In 1995, for instance, I made a gender impact assessment of the social and economic development programme of a regional Belgian government, then I investigated the gender impact of governmental programmes to fight poverty and social exclusion and, later on, I evaluated how gender mainstreaming was implemented by Belgian authorities in the European Social Fund programmes between 1994 and 1999.

In July 2001, the Belgian Prime-Minister, Minister of Employment and of Equality policy asked me to join her team of counsellors in order to insure the “gender mainstreaming” dimension of the Belgian Presidency of European Union. Based on this experience which just came to an end, my contribution today aims at highlighting the political process undertaken at EU level to gender mainstreaming EU policies, and especially economic and financing policies. The question I’m raising is, if yes or no, “gender budgeting” can be considered as an inclusive part of the gender mainstreaming strategy developed at EU level.

The EU commitment to gender mainstreaming
In the Community, the policy change from “promotion of equal opportunities for men and women” to a strategy of “mainstreaming of gender equality” into all European policies areas was relatively rapid. Everybody agrees to consider 1995 as a pivotal year, the intensive preparation of the Beijing Conference offering the political context for this policy shift because of lots of talks and discussions that took place within the European institutions, between the European Commission, the Member States and other international organisations and also with the women’s organisations who succeeded in making their voices heard.

Since then, the EU commitment to gender mainstreaming has been built step by step. Articles 2 and 3 of The Treaty formalise the Community commitment to gender mainstreaming. The 1996 Commission Communication "Incorporating equal opportunities for women and men into all Community policies and activities" gives a definition of the concept of "mainstreaming" and states the commitment of the Commission to adopt a policy based on "mobilising all general measures specifically for the purpose of achieving equality". This was the formal launching point of the commitment of the Commission to a policy based on mainstreaming and it has served as the basis for all subsequent activities. In 2000 the Commission adopted the Communication "Towards a Community strategy on gender equality (2001-2005)". Equal opportunities is now an integral part of the European employment strategy, the Structural Funds covering the years 2000-2006, and development co-operation and Research Policy.

The Commission’s document on “Women and Science : the gender dimension as a leverage for reforming science” suggests a strategy on women and science to achieve a reinforced Policy Forum; an enriched Gender Watch System; an improved understanding of the of the “gender and science “issue. In June 2001, the Swedish Presidency of the EU has put forward a resolution for approval at the Research Council in which the Commission is invited to continue and intensify its efforts to ensure effective mainstreaming of the gender dimension when implementing the new Sixth Framework programme and developping the European Research Area. A European conference on gender and research, organised in Brussels last November, demonstrated the progress already made by the Commission through the implementation of its strategy to promote women in science and defined ways for reinforcing its gender mainstreaming strategy.

Major steps have also been made to translate the commitment to gender mainstreaming in the European Structural Funds into practice. The preparations by the EC for the reform of the Funds, called agenda 2000, provided a significant opportunity for a major change in the treatment of gender equality in the Funds as long as, for the first time, it was possible to intervene at the beginning of the process of revision of the regulations and guidelines for the programming period 2000-2006."

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Aktualisiert: 13.02.2005