Gender Policy Implementation Constrained by a Lack of Policy Ownership: Evidence from the Western Balkans

It is more of a rule rather than an exception that international and national reports evaluating the progress toward gender equality single out the need for successful implementation as a missing prerequisite in the attainment of gender equality goals. In newly democratized countries, many of the gender policy ideas originate from abroad. External pressure and the aid dependency have given donors and international organizations such as EU and UN the power to influence the direction of gender policy ideas, which creates a problem of local policy ownership. This article presents empirical evidence on how a lack of ownership affects implementation of Gender Responsive Budgeting (GRB) in the Western Balkans. The findings of the study show that as the vision of the GBR was not homegrown, it lacked commitment among the policy formulators as well as the implementers. Moreover, due to a lack of ownership of vision, the level of understanding or conceptualization among the implementers was also very low, which contributed significantly to the poor implementation of the GRB measures.