In order to correct for the initial gender blindness of the Paris Declaration and related aid modalities as general and sector budget support, it has been proposed to integrate a gender dimension into budget support entry points. This paper studies the effectiveness of (joint) gender working groups and the integration of sex-disaggregated indicators and targets in performance assessment frameworks in the context of education sector budget support delivered to a sample of 17 Sub-Saharan African (SSA) countries over the period 2005-10. Findings of the qualitative comparative analysis demonstrate that engendering these two budget support entry points contributed to high performance on increasing female enrolment.
This study analyses the effects of the inclusion of sex-disaggregated indicators and targets in Performance Assessment Frameworks (PAFs) and the set-up of joint gender (sector) working groups, measures that have been suggested to increase the gender-sensitivity of sector and general budget support. It explores whether these measures have contributed to changes in gender-specific outcomes, in what ways and under which circumstances. In doing this, the research also connects with the ongoing discussion on the comparative effectiveness of ‘hard’ (inclusion of sex-disaggregated indicators and targets) versus ‘soft’ (set up of gender working group) incentives for triggering gender mainstreaming.
The research focuses on the education sector and on SSA countries that received budget support from the European Commission. Drawing upon a review of various relevant streams of literature in the area of gender mainstreaming and gender and education aid effectiveness, the analytical framework selects a ‘harder’ (indicators in PAF) and a ‘softer’ (gender working group) type of incentive, two aid dimensions (aid volume in basic education and aid dependency) and three dimensions that represent the country context (income, education costs for households, and gender institutional setting). Due to the authors’ particular interest in the possible interplay of the different factors under study, qualitative comparative analysis (QCA) has been employed for the analysis. It focuses on two specific education outcomes, increase in female net enrolment ratio (NER) and increase in female survival rate to last grade. While the QCA analysis of the first outcome provides a contradictory free solution, contradictions in the analysis of the second outcome were not solved.
- Findings of the QCA analysis with respect to high performance on increasing female NER highlight that the inclusion of sex-disaggregated NER indicators and/or the presence of a joint gender working group contributed to an increase in female NER. In all solutions the presence of sex-disaggregated NER indicators in the PAF and/or the presence of a gender working groups (GWG) are included.
- In countries with a supportive context (free education in combination with a relatively low gender discrimination and/or highly aid dependency), the presence of a gender working group (soft incentive) has been sufficient, in countries with a less supportive context the inclusion of sex-disaggregated NER indicators (hard incentive) has been necessary.
- A positive relation is presumed between the presence of a gender working group and the inclusion of sex-disaggregated indicators in the PAF (in seven out of nine countries with a positive outcome both sex-disaggregated indicators in the PAF and a gender working group are present), further research is needed to explore the mutually reinforcing influence of gender working groups and the inclusion of sex-disaggregated indicators in the PAF.
The findings of the study tie in closely with the outcomes of a 2012 OECD/DAC study demonstrating that international targets for gender equality in education have been effective in focusing donor efforts on reducing enrolment gaps between girls and boys. According to this study similar global commitments and targets with respect to gender equality in the economic and productive sectors could help to intensify donor efforts in these critical areas where gender-based inequalities often tend to be even more pronounced than in the education sector. In line with this, one could argue in favour of broadening the inclusion of gender and/or sex-disaggregated indicators and targets in PAFs beyond the education (and health) sector to economic and productive sectors. However, as it is highly likely that other aid and context dimensions will be of influence in these sectors, more fine-tuned research that specifically focuses on these sectors is needed.