The government will boost next year’s spending on gender-responsive policies by 68 percent as part of its efforts to promote public awareness of gender equality and boost women’s status and economic participation, officials said Monday.

According to a budget draft submitted by the Ministry of Strategy and Finance to the parliament, the government plans to spend 22.4 trillion won on a range of policies related to gender equality, a 68 percent increase from 13.3 trillion won set aside this year.

The significant gender-budget increase came after the Finance Ministry began to apply gender-based analyses to its budget process, at the request of the Gender Equality Ministry. The gender-aware budget is part of a gender mainstreaming strategy adopted to recognize how equally public spending is distributed to men and women, officials said.

A total of 339 projects, up from 275 this year, will be operated by the central government.

Projects have been proposed to strengthen women’s economic power, support both men and women to better balance work and home, stamp out domestic violence and improve public welfare and health.

The government plans to expand the child care support program, a key gender-related policy, from 2.59 trillion won this year to 3.76 trillion won next year. Nearly 40 billion won will be spent to build 100 more child care facilities next year.

To prevent sexual violence and better support victims, the government seeks to spend about 31.4 billion won next year, a 5.8 percent rise from this year. To increase the country’s contribution to the United Nation’s gender equality projects, the government has allocated 5.1 billion won next year.

Officials at the Finance Ministry said that they have advised other ministries to uncover gender biases in policies and try to achieve equal distribution of resources.

Next year’s gender budget was drafted based on the Park Geun-hye administration’s state agendas on gender equality, officials added.

President Park pledged to encourage more women to work by providing opportunities in education and employment, and by helping to ease the burden of child care. She also vowed to assign female figures to key government posts and to nurture female leaders in the public and private sectors. 


By Cho Chung-un
(christory@heraldcorp.com)