Tunisia's Gender-Responsive Budgeting Reform — Institutionalised but Under 1% of Spending Reallocated

Tunisia's Loi Organique du Budget n° 2019-15 of 13 February 2019 embeds gender-responsive budgeting (GRB) into the country's performance-based budgeting framework (Gestion du Budget par Objectifs). Article 18 requires programme managers to build objective- and performance-based budgets using indicators that guarantee equity and equal opportunity between men and women, subject to evaluation on that basis.
Implementation runs through a central Gender Budgeting Office (GBO) unit at the Ministry of Finance, supported by UN Women and GIZ, working with 12 ministries — including Women/Family/Children/Seniors, Justice, Social Affairs, Higher Education, Health, Interior, Tourism, Defense, Commerce, Equipment, and Communication Technologies — using standardised "Budget Sensible au Genre" (BSG) sheets. A capacity-building programme trained officials from these ministries (22 women and 12 men) in GRB tools, and gender-sensitive budget sheets have been produced across ministries for the FY2020 and FY2021 budget cycles.
Despite this institutional build-out, an independent gender-budget analysis (cited via a UNICEF Tunisia gender analysis report and reported in Tunisian press in 2026) found that under 1% of Tunisian public expenditure directly benefits women, with a further 1.3% benefiting them indirectly through family/child-linked programmes — meaning well over 95% of the budget was constructed without differentiated gender analysis translating into resource reallocation.
Caveat, stated honestly: this is a case where the procedural and institutional machinery of gender budgeting — legal mandate, dedicated unit, trained staff, standardised budget sheets across a dozen ministries — is real and well documented, but the measured budgetary outcome shows the reform has not yet materially reallocated public resources toward gender equity. It illustrates the common regional pattern of GRB reforms achieving administrative institutionalisation well ahead of substantive fiscal impact, and is included here as a cautionary rather than a success case.

Read the full analysis: https://legislation-securite.tn/latest-laws/loi-organique-n-2019-15-du-13-fevrier-2019-relative-a-la-loi-organique-du-budget/