The Permanent Mission of Canada to the United Nations,the Permanent Mission of the Republic of the Philippines to the United Nations, and IDRC are co-hosting a panel at the 52^nd session of the UN Commission on the Status of Women.

Women are increasingly holding governments accountable to their commitments to international treaties and UN goals by linking these commitments to the distribution, use, and generation of public resources. One tool for doing this is gender analysis of public budgets.

Not simply a technical exercise, gender-responsive budgeting (GRB) requires government officials to think about finances in a new way. It means looking beyond the household to examine how budgets address the needs of male and female members. This, of course, requires access to good data, particularly sex-disaggregated data.

The lack of such data is a major challenge, even more so when GRB efforts move beyond the national level and attempt to engage local governments.

This panel discusses how community-based poverty monitoring systems (CBMS), such as the one piloted in the Philippines and elsewhere in the world with IDRC support, can facilitate local-level GRB by filling the data gap. It also discusses how CBMS engages local governments in planning and budgeting, based on evidence about the real needs and priorities of women and men.