February 12 – March 13, 2019

The PEFA Secretariat is seeking feedback on a proposed PEFA Gender Module to assess gender responsiveness of countries’ public financial management systems. The PEFA Gender Module is a set of supplementary questions built on the PEFA framework to collect information on gender responsive public financial management  practices. 

The public consultation is now OPEN through March 13, 2019. We invite any interested PEFA stakeholders to provide feedback. The team is specifically interested in stakeholders’ comments on the following aspects of the draft Gender Module:

• Proposed overall approach to collecting information on gender responsive public financial management practices using PEFA
• Relevance and usefulness of the proposed set of questions to collect information on gender responsive public financial management
• Following the consultation period, the proposed PEFA Gender Module will be updated taking into account comments received. It is also proposed for the module to be pilot tested to ensure that it is applicable across a wide range of country contexts and administrative heritages.

The PEFA Steering Committee will evaluate the pilots and decide on the PEFA Gender Module following the period of testing and consultation. 

Please send any comments and suggestions with ‘PEFA Gender Module’ in the subject line to Jens Kromann Kristensen, Head of the PEFA Secretariat at jkristensen@pefa.org w/cc to the PEFA Secretariat services account at services@pefa.org.

About PEFA Gender Module

The PEFA gender module is a set of supplementary questions built on the PEFA framework to collect information on gender responsive public financial management practices. 

The questions have been designed to cover all stages of the budget cycle: policy-based fiscal strategy and budgeting, predictability and control in budget execution, accounting and reporting, and external scrutiny and audit, including governments’ efforts to make information on fiscal performance publicly available and strengthen management of assets and liabilities. 

The PEFA gender module is intended to be conducted on a voluntary basis. A decision to carry out a PEFA gender module will be solely at the discretion of country authorities. The findings of a PEFA gender assessment will be quality reviewed by the PEFA Secretariat similarly to all PEFA assessment reports. 

The PEFA gender module was designed by the PEFA Secretariat as a response to requests that have been received from groups and practitioners involved in PFM and gender responsive budgeting reforms. A process of public consultation carried out to assess the upgraded PEFA framework identified gender responsiveness as a gap in existing PFM diagnostic tools that needed to be addressed.