The institutional environment of gender budgeting: Learning from the Portuguese experience.

This article calls attention to how the main actors, governance, and political issues play and interlace in developing gender budgeting (GB), hindering or fostering the initiation process. The successful implementation of GB requires political commitment at the highest national levels, particularly the Ministry of Finance; close and effective collaboration between gender equality authorities and budgetary authorities with capacity on GB matters; and a budgeting method appropriate for public policy assessment, such as programme-based budgeting. If these key conditions are not met, competitive logics from civil service and civil society may prevail over the state's logic, resulting in limited progress. This article analyses the institutional environment around gender budgeting (GB) implementation. In the academic literature, research on GB is still scarce. This article, using the case of Portugal (at the central government level), contributes to the academic literature by explaining the institutional context around GB development and implementation—specifically, how various factors and actors combine and interact to encourage or hamper the GB initiation process. The authors highlight the traps to be avoided. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]