The Government of Catalonia approved a programme on Tuesday for the temporary analysis and design of an intersectional gender perspective and non-discrimination applied to the areas of the budgets of the Generalitat de Catalunya and access to European funds in Catalonia. This programme will effectively implement gender mainstreaming in the management of European funds and in the calculation of the gender impact of the budgets of the Government of Catalonia as an essential tool to achieve gender equality and the feminist transformation of the country.

The analysis of the gender impact on the budgets of the Generalitat de Catalunya will help to understand the economic cost of gender inequalities, identify the resources allocated to address gender inequalities and discrimination, and is also a key tool to ensure that resources have a positive impact on the entire population. Budgets are a reflection of the political priorities of public administrations and, for this reason, assessing their gender impact helps to identify factors that make gender inequalities persistent and allows spending to be adjusted to eradicate them. Being aware that budgets are not neutral in their effects and can generate gender biases is the first step in integrating the gender perspective across the board and ensuring a more equitable, transparent, and efficient distribution of resources that promotes structural change in favour of gender equality

The Government of Catalonia will also apply this approach in the management of European funds so that the gender perspective is included at all stages of their management, including assessment, monitoring indicators, and criteria for selecting proposals, in order to reduce existing gaps in access to and distribution of these resources.

The government considers that the incorporation of the gender perspective applied to the accounts of the Generalitat and the management of European funds is a key and essential element, not only due to the existing structural inequality between women and men but also because the crisis generated by the pandemic and the global economic crisis resulting from the war in Ukraine have had a greater impact on women, both in terms of inequalities (in the workplace, in the inability to balance work and family life, and in the feminisation of precarious work, among other aspects) and in relation to gender-based violence.