Breathe
By Graciela Rojas, Founder and President of the STEM Movement.
Budget allocation is one of the fundamental processes for the functioning of the State; it reflects the set of obligations, commitments and purposes of a government. In Mexico it is called the Federal Expenditure Budget and is prepared by the Federal Executive through the Ministry of Finance and Public Credit. It describes the amount, distribution and destination of public resources of the three branches of the federation, autonomous agencies, as well as transfers to state and municipal governments[1].
Gender Budgeting consists of an analysis of the public budget process, in order to know the scope and impact of public policies, generally broken down by programs and projects, on women and girls compared to men and boys[2]. This analysis involves from the labeling of resources to address a problem in the population of a certain gender, as well as the diagnosis and study of the effects or consequences differentiated by gender of the population.
The Mexican legal framework for the exercise of budgets with a gender perspective refers to the General Law for Equality between Men and Women, Chapter Two, Article 12, which states that the Federal Government must include in the Federal Expenditure Budgets the allocation of resources for the fulfillment of the National Policy on Equality[3]. Chapter Three, Article Fifteen, also refers to this incorporation, as well as the Law, General Rules and Executors of Expenditure of the Federal Budget and Fiscal Responsibility Law, in Article One and Article One Hundred and Eleven[4].
Upon analyzing the budget package presented by the Federal Executive and approved for the current year[5], we find that the gender and sex variable has been taken into account in the elaboration of programs of the Public Education branch, a key space for the construction of occupational trajectories with the Gender Equality Policy in the Education Sector, whose purpose is to contribute to the elimination of gender roles and stereotypes that affect the access, permanence and timely completion of girls, boys, teenagers and women.
The fact sheets of two emblematic federal budget programs were chosen to learn about the results obtained through their budget allocation during the 2022 fiscal year[6], and which were related to a STEM trajectory: the Elisa Acuña Scholarship Program and the Scientific Research and Technological Development Program. The following was found:
The Elisa Acuña Scholarships are awarded to young people in higher education. The program's data sheet indicates the execution of expenditures indistinctly and without emphasizing the gender of the beneficiaries, as well as their trajectories, since it does not differentiate by area of study, which makes it difficult in the long term to visualize the impact of this budgetary exercise on the development of more professional trajectories of women in STEM. In addition, each institution establishes its own indicators, so in most cases it is not possible to make comparisons.
Also in the field of Public Education there is the Scientific Research and Technological Development program , which seeks to contribute to the Mexican population benefiting from the development of science and technological innovation. Of the actions articulated by the program, carried out by higher and higher education institutions, only the availability of academic staff for research is emphasized, this being the only indicator disaggregated by gender and evaluated by the same entity executing the program.
According to the 2020 Population Census conducted by INEGI, 51.2% of the Mexican population is made up of women[7] (see Figure 1), i.e. more than half of the country's population. School attendance registered from three years of age onwards is comparable between men and women (63.7% women and 63.0% men), even in technical and higher education, the drop in enrollment is similar (46.0% and 44.7% respectively) (see Figure 2). Although the differences in participation in the school system are not statistically visible, economic participation is significantly different, as only 39.7% of the EAP[8] are women compared to the 60.3% of men that make up the EAP (see Figure 3).
Figure 1. Percentage of the Mexican population, by sex
Source: INEGI (2020). Population Census 2020.
Percentage of School Attendance by Age Group, by Sex
Source: INEGI (2020). Population Census 2020.
Figure 3. Economically Active Population by sex
Source: INEGI (2022). ENOE third quarter.
Data presented in the report corresponding to the fourth quarter of 2022 of the National Occupation and Employment Survey[9] show that 77.9% of women are mostly located in the tertiary sector, focused on services, and only 17.3% in the secondary sector, which has the greatest potential as it concentrates STEM-related activities, and the remaining 4.6% in the primary sector (see Figure 4). Additionally, most women do not earn more than a minimum wage for the productive activities they perform.
Figure 4. Percentage of female EAP participation by productive sector
Source: INEGI (2022). ENOE third quarter.
In summary, men and women have similar access to education in the school system; however, the occupational trajectories of men and women in Mexico are quite different due to the types of activities in which they engage, the careers they study, the fields in which they develop, the salaries they receive, and the intersection with other roles such as motherhood.
Given this unequal panorama, public resources should continue to be allocated with a gender perspective and measurements should be disaggregated by gender in order to know the differences in the impact generated by public actions. For example, it would be of great importance that programs such as Jóvenes Construyendo el Futuro of the Labor and Social Security branch, whose contribution is to promote the occupational trajectories of people between 18 and 29 years of age, have data disaggregated by gender in order to know what the occupational conditions are at the end of the program.
The girls, teenagers and women in our country cannot wait, we cannot continue exercising the budget without knowing the differentiated impacts of public policy on women and men. It is a great advance that the gender perspective has been integrated into the budget, but in order to improve the programs, it is necessary to incorporate the gender perspective in all the processes of the Performance Based Budget-Performance Evaluation System (PbR-SED).
At Movimiento STEM we are certain that talent has no gender and that STEM Education (Science, Technology, Engineering and Mathematics) has the capacity to empower girls and women in the areas of greatest potential, so that they can discover and develop their talent and solve the great challenges of humanity, for which it is not only necessary to allocate budget but also to measure with this perspective.
References:
[1] SIL, Presupuesto de Egresos de la Federación, Available: https://bit.ly/3EZohjW
[2] de Villota, P., Jubeto, Y., & Ferrari, I. (n.d.). Strategies for gender mainstreaming in public budgets.
[3] Bienestar, S. de. (2018, September 5). Igualdad de Género. gob.mx. Retrieved March 6, 2023, from https://www.gob.mx/bienestar/acciones-y-programas/igualdad-de-genero-174139#:~:text=La%20Pol%C3%ADtica%20Nacional%20de%20Igualdad,%2C%20laboral%2C%20cultural%20e%20institucional.
[4] Federal Budget and Fiscal Responsibility Law (2006).
[5] Ministry of Finance and Public Credit (2023). Transparencia Presupuestaria Observatorio del gasto. Programas. Available: https://bit.ly/2PXXhtQ
[6] The Elisa Acuña Scholarship Program and the Scientific Research and Technological Development Program can be found, together with the files of all budgeted programs, on the website https://www.transparenciapresupuestaria.gob.mx/Programas of the Ministry of Finance and Public Credit.
[7] INEGI (2020) Population Census 2020: Presentation of results United Mexican States.
[8] EAP stands for Economically Active Population.
[9] National Occupation and Employment Survey (2022) [Economically Active Population (EAP)].
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