The Budget Is The Most Important Policy Tool Of Government

Research Question: What is the effect of gender representation on welfare policies on the state level?

With wage discrimination between men and women, occupational segregation, higher poverty rates among females, and the lack of women in the decision-making body, Canadian women continue to fall behind men economically, socially, and politically. According to Linda Trimble and Pamela Marie Paxton, the lack of female political representation has been the principal reason for ongoing gender inequality. The underrepresentation of women in decision-making positions results in the neglect of women’s issues in public policies and programs; thus, the lack of critical numbers of women representatives not only impedes women from important negotiations in areas of finance or labour, but it also allows for the unequal status quo to continue/exist between genders.

Reserve the few important portfolios for the women-------- female ministers are typically given ‘feminine’ portfolios, such as education, health, social welfare or environment. Moreover, governments do not consider gender equality as a priority, gender equality issues are missing from the budgeting process, and women are not present in the financial, peace, and international negotiations, structures and delegations. The participation of a proportion of women in government in all levels should be established as one of the rules of democracy. All governments should thus include a proportion of women. Men and women alike are fitted to hold government

Women and poverty is one of the critical areas of concern from the Beijing Platform for Action. Unfortunately there is over 1 billion of who are women that are living in poverty. Most of the women who are living in poverty and in very poor condition are from developing countries, but we also have this problem here in the United States. Poverty has been a factor of little to no education, single mother raising their families, little resources, and pay gap. In the article of Beijing Declaration and Platform for Action, Fourth World Conference on Women, one of the strategic objectives is, to analyze from a gender perspective, policies and programmers including those related to macroeconomic stability, structural adjustment, external debt problems,

Gender equality, especially in regards to women's rights, is a primary concern of many for the upcoming election. Throughout American history women have always faced an inferior placement in American policies. Even though recently liberal ideals have been placed to ensure more rights for women, such issues still plague society. For example, in America, statistically, a woman makes seventy-seven cents for every dollar a man earns. To gain social, political, and economic equality of the sexes, it is the role of the government to give attention to and cultivate a strategy to target these individual issues. Such issues were further fueled during the eight year long Bush administration. George W.

The federal budget has been of much concern in the past decade. The public is growing increasingly aware of the growing federal debt but nobody is offering solutions to our country’s deficit spending. Thus the public is uniformed about how much money is spent on certain programs such as Social Security, Medicare, and Medicaid. In Red Ink, David Wessel offers a comprehensive view about what consists of the federal budget, how the government receives revenues, and how the government spends this money.

In almost all nations involved with the Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development, female involvement in the workforce has increased significantly. There are more women in the workforce than ever before and these numbers continue to increase, but gender inequality is still an issue in nations like Canada. Among these issues, economic gender inequality continues to exist due to inadequately addressed issues in the workplace and society. These issues include horizontal segregation and vertical

As the sole United States Delegate to the 2014 G(irls)20 Summit in Sydney, Australia, I worked with over twenty four other women to write a communique focused on how to economically empower women and girls internationally. The communique was then presented to the Parliamentary Secretary to the Prime Minister of Australia and other leaders. For the past eight years, I have also participated as well as staffed numerous Model United Nations Conferences

Adopting pragmatic policy actions to promote more economic participation by women is not only critical to prosperity at long-run but can significantly contribute to the economic growth of the state. The potential gains by the United States which is the largest among the economically advanced countries can be replicated at the state level. On the contrary, expert opinions are of the view that the declining proportion of the active labor force due to demographic transition and slowing technological progress could cause the growth trajectory of the GDP to decelerate. Harnessing the potentials of gender equality will significantly stabilize the GDP growth over the coming decade.

If women continue to be absent from politics and policy making, then women’s voices remain unheard when decisions are made about their lives, bodies, and futures. Further explanation of the impact of this problem can be understood by observing the gender gap between men and women in voter turnout. The gender gap in voting, is between 4 and 10% (Diekman & Schneider, 2010). This relatively small difference can have a large impact in elections and can change entire outcomes of political campaigns (Diekman & Schneider, 2010). For example, when voters report an interest in areas that have historically been considered women’s issues, such as reproductive rights, candidates are more likely to emphasize those issues during their campaigns (Diekman & Schneider, 2010). This example highlights that without increased political participation from women, the continued passage of legislation that positively effects women and girls may be effected. The impact of more women being engaged in politics and political democracy is that it may inspire more women to pursue it. Research has shown that women are more knowledgeable about politics when a woman candidates are on ballot tickets. According to Karp (2008) the presence of women as candidates or as policy-makers’ influences women’s engagement because when women hold elected seats, women’s policy issues are passed in legislatures. A secondary benefit is that more women in positions of power may be a symbolic cue to society that politics isn’t just a “man’s game” (Karp,

Both the United States and European Union are very progressive and dominant economic and political bodies. Both the United States and European Union are leaders in global affairs, and set a standard for many countries to follow. Both the United States and European Union have strived to fight the gender pay gap. However, both the United States and European Union have yet to completely close their gender pay gap. The benefits gained by closing the gender pay gap boil down to the fact that such equality would create a more equal society. As well as equality between men and women, closing the gap would help reduce the risk of women going into poverty and an overall increase in women lifetime earnings. Creating an environment of equality between men and women would speak volumes in terms of economic growth, and overall well-being of both men women alike. Both the United States and European Union has made substantial efforts in closing the gender pay gap. Yet between the two, one has done a better job towards meeting such a desired and long-term goal and has gained some of the possible benefits acquired from closing the gender pay gap.

Roach v Electoral Commission 2007: Vicki Lee Roach was an Aboriginal woman serving six years in jail who challenged the validity

Panel, and Studies, T. (2015). The National Equality Panel - Institute For Fiscal Studies - IFS. [online] Ifs.org.uk. Available at: http://www.ifs.org.uk/centres/cpp/impacts/457 [Accessed 16 Oct. 2015].

According to the World Economic Forum, it will take 118 years to close the global pay gap between men and women (WEF). Common recommendations on how to fix this problem, like improved child-care and maternity leave policies, are difficult to implement and costly. However, there are ways to fix other large contributors to the gender wage gap. A frequently overlooked contributor is women’s negotiations of their salaries, or lack thereof. Because women tend to negotiate less than men, they on average have lower salaries. This difference in annual pay leads to a large discrepancy between the gender’s earnings and greatly factors into the gap. Policies such as pay transparency and programs in self management increase the incentive and ability of women to negotiate their salaries, which is crucial in narrowing the gender pay gap.

Historically, incrementalism has characterized public budgeting because at its core, budgeting has evolved: increased and decreased through gradual stages within the realm of the political arena. The need for this one step at a time type of response, found within incremental budgeting, would have likely been caused by the known fact that prior to the 1900’s public welfare programs, federal, states, and even city spending did not exist in the way in which is more than obviously observable in today’s society simply because America did not employ an actual budgetary system. Therefore, as with any unchartered territory, it was approached in stages, with caution, a little at a time in response to the growing needs of the public. Aaron Wildavsky made this case in his book “The politics of the budgetary process,” when he pointed out “budgeting is incremental, not comprehensive. The beginning of wisdom about an agency budget is that it is almost never actively reviewed as a whole every year in the sense of reconsidering the value of all existing programs as compared to all alternatives. Instead, it is based on last year’s budget with special attention given to a narrow range of increases or decreases.” (Wildavsky 1964, p. 15)