Gender Auditing in a Capability Approach

Feminist studies have developed several tools to assess the gender impact of public policy and, in particular, of public budgets. We introduce an innovative approach to gender auditing of public budgets inspired by the capability approach. On the one hand we expand the scope of assessing the gender policy impact taking into account women’s multidimensional wellbeing, on the other hand, we use a women’s perspective to conceptualize the capability approach and make it operational in the space of public policies. Within this extended reproductive approach, gender budgets could become a tool for advancing a reflection on social and individual well being and for greater transparency on the gender division of labour, the distribution of resources and sharing of responsibilities