The EU Mutual Learning Programme in Gender Equality – Progress on gender and equality budgeting within the European Union: Comments paper – Finland

Gender budgeting has been consistent in the Finnish government; it has become a
tradition that gender budgeting is mentioned in the Finnish Government’s Action Plan
for Gender Equality drawn up by each Government. However, the used gender budgeting measures have been criticized as incomplete. One of the practices is that
each ministry describes major gender equality impacts of their budgets as part of
yearly budget planning. These texts tend to highlight specific measures targeted at
promoting gender equality but do not help in assessing the gender impact of the whole budget. The recent cuts in the production and dissemination of research and statistics on gender equality weaken the Finnish institutional framework for gender
mainstreaming and gender budgeting. Gender budgeting has been developed in
Finland particularly in two projects carried out by the Ministry of Finance in 2018 and
2022–23. One of the practices developed by the projects is an intersectional gender
assessment framework, which uses the SISU microsimulation model to assess the
amendments in taxation and social benefits.