European Gender Budgeting Standards and Their Implementation in Ukraine

Abstract

The article examines the theoretical foundations and practical experience of applying European standards of gender budgeting and substantiates the directions for their implementation into Ukraine’s budget process in the context of wartime challenges, post-war recovery and European integration. The purpose of the study is to systematize European approaches to gender-responsive budgeting, to identify institutional, methodological and legal discrepancies between European practice and the Ukrainian model, and to develop proposals for adapting the experience of European Union member states to the domestic budget process. The research methods include structural-logical analysis of scientific literature, comparative analysis of the legal framework for gender budgeting in Ukraine and EU member states, generalization for systematizing approaches to gender budget analysis, as well as graphical and tabular methods for visualizing research results. The article traces the evolution of gender budgeting from Council of Europe initiatives and the 1995 Beijing Platform for Action to the contemporary EIGE toolkit, the 2025 Roadmap for Women’s Rights and the EU Gender Equality Strategy 2026–2030. The main models of gender budgeting applied in EU member states are characterized, including the comprehensive model of mainstreaming a gender perspective throughout the whole budget cycle (Austria, Belgium), the model of gender auditing of expenditures (Sweden, Finland), and the model of pilot gender budget initiatives at the local level (Germany, Spain). The state of implementation of the gender-responsive approach in Ukraine’s budget process is analyzed, the achievements of the methodological framework developed by the Ministry of Finance of Ukraine are identified, and key problems are revealed, including insufficient integration of gender analysis into the budget execution process, insufficient sex-disaggregated statistics at the level of budget programmes, limited training of specialists in gender-responsive budgeting analysis, and the absence of systematic gender auditing. It is substantiated that effective implementation of European standards into domestic practice requires the regulatory consolidation of the gender-responsive approach as a mandatory component of the budget process, the development of a unified methodology for gender analysis of budget programmes, the expansion of sex-disaggregated data collection and reporting, and institutional strengthening of the role of gender focal points within key spending units. The practical significance of the findings lies in the possibility of using the formulated proposals by public authorities and local self-government bodies when improving methodological recommendations on the application of the gender-responsive approach in the budget process, as well as by researchers and students in further studies of gender economics and public finance issues.