Università degli studi di Modena e Reggio Emilia

Abstract
In the almost 40 years since the initiatives in Australia for gender budgeting, scholarship, institutional engagement, and civil society campaigning have been burgeoning. Has gender budgeting ‘stuck’ as an approach to feminist policy making or gender mainstreaming? Is it sufficiently robust as a concept? Are there weaknesses in implementation? Are there institutional resistances that are deliberate or about weaknesses in knowledge building and implementation? Has the concept of gender budgeting been lost in the mix with the increase in other alternative approaches to budgeting? These are among the series of questions for policy makers, feminist activists, and academic and institutional research arising from recent research and commentary. Gender budgeting seeks to integrate gender analysis in the analytical process of policy development and the process of revenue raising, and resource allocation and spending. Human Rights budgeting aims to secure that international human rights standards and treaty obligations are respected, protected and fulfilled in the formulation of government budgets and management of public finances to secure the maximisation of available resources for the progressive realisation of rights. Both these approaches require and aim to support participation of women and other marginalised voices. Participatory budgeting has increased in popularity as a mechanism to boost community engagement in local decision. making, but does participatory budgeting have an equality and human rights lens, in its design and implementation?