Workshop on gender mainstreaming and gender budgeting
Present at the workshop were VWU President Nguyen Thi Thanh Hoa, Vice President Nguyen Thi Thu Ha and representatives from VWU’s departments and units. Speakers at the workshop were two Australian gender experts: Ms. Mia Urbano, Social Development Specialist, Mekong and Regional Hub, Department of Foreign Affairs and Trade, and Ms. Cara Ellickson, Director of Gender Consortium, Flinders University.
Opening the workshop, VWU President Nguyen Thi Thanh Hoa said this was a good chance for VWU to gain information and experiences in promoting gender equality from other countries. She expected to receive advice from the experts on gender mainstreaming and gender budgeting, which would help VWU carry out better its representativeness, especially in the promotion of gender-responsive budgeting in Vietnam.
Sharing the results of the 4-country study on effective approaches to promoting gender equality, Ms. Mia Urbano pointed out some challenges in promoting gender equality such as lack of empirical or field based evidence on effective approaches for promoting gender equality; limited documentation - both formal and informal - of the processes used to address gender inequality. And she revealed that where gender equality promotion has worked well, there have been women’s coalitions and organisations, and strategic choices have been made regarding development issues to work on that are of high priority (relevance) and likely to yield results (credibility).
Speaking about gender budgeting, Ms. Cara Ellickson elaborated that gender budgeting is about determining where the needs of men and women, boys and girls are the same, and where they differ. Where the needs are different, allocations should be different. Mrs. Cara also emphasized on the benefits of gender-responsive budgeting namely to assist in implementing the objectives of budgetaryreforms - transparency, accountability and civil society participation - good governance; to add value to results-based performance of budgeting systems - policy effectiveness, equity and efficiency; to foster economic growth by reducing inequalities; greater gender equity leads to economic efficiencies; to contribute to poverty reduction and the achievement of international poverty commitments such as MDG’s...
Participants and specialists shared some experiences to be applicable in Vietnam such as to influencepolicy makers in gender budgeting we needcompelling data and case studies to prove the importance of gender budgeting; coordination with other organizations, ministries, sectors to provide arguments and data on the severity of issues related to gender inequality; the use of gender analysis tools as well as the participation of gender experts, particularly gender sensitive economic experts; VWU's role in organizing meetings at communities to understand and analyze different groups’ needs in society, etc.
The workshop was successful in providing participants information and useful experiences, contributing to improve VWU staff’s capacity.
On this occasion, on behalf of the Presidium of the Vietnam Women's Union, VWU President Nguyen Thi Thanh Hoa conferred the Merit Medal “For the Development of Vietnamese Women” on Ms. Cara Ellickson in recognition of her contribution to the advancement of women in Vietnam and VWU activities. VWU President Nguyen Thi Thanh Hoa confers the Merit Medal on Mrs. Cara Ellickson 
