South Africa's Women's Budget Initiative — Parliament-led gender analysis of the national budget (1995–2000)

Launched in mid-1995 by the Community Agency for Social Enquiry (CASE) and the Institute for Democracy in South Africa (IDASA), working with women members of Parliament's Joint Standing Committee on Finance, the Women's Budget Initiative (WBI) conducted a systematic gender analysis of South Africa's national budget, publishing the first Women's Budget in 1996.

To identify gender-blind budget policies and press for gender-responsive fiscal reform in South Africa.

Between 1996 and 2000 the WBI analysed 100% of the national budget annually and extended its methodology to provincial and local budgets, identifying gender-blind policies such as VAT on paraffin, a cooking fuel disproportionately purchased by poor women.

Following sustained WBI advocacy, VAT on paraffin was removed in 2001; the National Treasury introduced mandatory Gender Budget Statements from four pilot sectors in 2010/2011; the Cabinet adopted the Gender Responsive Planning, Budgeting, Monitoring, Evaluation and Auditing Framework (GRPBMEAF) in 2019; and the WBI is credited by the IMF and World Bank with inspiring gender-responsive budgeting in more than 40 countries.

Institutional momentum declined after 2000 when key parliamentary champions departed, and a 2021 assessment found fewer than 50% of government departments were effectively implementing gender budgeting despite the 2019 framework.