Gender-responsive budgeting failing women as social grant cuts deepen inequality

At more than a quarter of a trillion rand, it is a figure the government is touting for gender-priority interventions, money supposedly utilised to address gender disparities across a range of sectors. 

While R342.1-billion may seem to be a large amount, pulling back the curtain reveals that this spending is a catalogue of existing government programmes and activities in which women are listed as the intended beneficiaries. Existing analysis doesn’t tell us if these interventions are addressing the gender disparities the government has identified, or if these allocations really produce better outcomes in women’s lives. The recent Medium-Term Budget Policy Statement is an example of this dynamic.

South Africa’s Gender Responsive Planning Budgeting Monitoring Evaluation and Auditing Framework, introduced in 2019, was developed to target structural inequality through mainstreaming gender into all government systems. Currently, it is difficult to tell if the framework is achieving this mandate. 

It operates with limited specific indicators, targets and outcomes. The annual Gender Budget Statement communicates spending purportedly designed to tackle gender disparities, and highlights issues such as severe food insecurity among women-headed households, and women’s low labour force participation. 

Intersecting structural conditions

However, it does not examine how these relate to intersecting structural conditions, such as unpaid care work, economic exclusion, sexism and patriarchal and societal norms, nor does it show how spending achieves clear indicators, measurable targets and meets identified needs in a specific sector.   

In this year’s Medium-Term Budget Policy Statement, the National Treasury announced a reprioritised R5.1-billion allocation for gender-based violence and femicide. This response was prompted by national grief following the discovery of 12 women’s bodies in Ekurhuleni, alongside the everyday violence endured by women and girls nationwide. 

The breakdown includes R3.8-billion to recruit 3,552 social workers, R186-million for criminal justice response, and R157.4-million to strengthen Department of Women, Youth and Persons with Disabilities national coordination and oversight. It was also declared that there would be an expansion of sexual offences courts, Thuthuzela care centres, GBV shelters and victim support programmes. 

Recruiting 3,552 social workers is a necessary step, but ensuring that social workers are able to translate their employment into measurable change for the communities they serve requires a much broader frame. There need to be attempts to ensure all social workers work in well-resourced environments in order to deliver the best care to their clients. 

There is pressure for social workers to deliver, but at times they operate with depleted resources, receive low remuneration and find themselves in dangerous work conditions. This has led to occupational burnout and compromised care. 

In Khayelitsha, visits to homes and schools were suspended due to armed robberies and hijackings experienced during working hours. As women constitute 61.3% of those working in the community and social services sector, they are directly exposed to the violence gripping communities.  A holistic approach must be adopted, investing in the working conditions, tools, and institutional support social workers need to practice safely and effectively. 

Oversight

At the oversight level, the Department of Women, Youth and Persons with Disabilities’ chronic implementation failures undermine its ability to deploy funds for critical GBV interventions. For example, R54.7-million remained unspent by the department. These funds from both the European Union and Criminal Assets Recovery Account were earmarked specifically for gender-responsive governance, the implementation of the National Strategic Plan on GBVF, women’s empowerment, and vital GBV programmes. 

There are consequences tied to this underspend; non-governmental and community-based organisations that support victims have closed due to insufficient and unsustainable funding. In a nation grappling with high rates of GBVF globally, the collapse of organisations providing counselling, referrals, prevention programmes, psychosocial support and advocacy cannot be excused by administrative hiccups within the department. 

A comprehensive approach also makes it clear that GBV allocations should not come at the cost of programmes that secure women’s economic security. R13-billion has been cut from social grants, allegedly freeing up money to help address GBVF and reduce child stunting. 

A large portion of these savings purportedly arose from curbing alleged fraud in the SA Social Security Agency (Sassa) system through enhanced biometric enrolment and beneficiary verification. However, available government data shows that 95% of grant cancellations (based on grant reviews) occur not through uncovering intentional mass defrauding of the state, but rather because of difficulties beneficiaries experience while navigating inaccessible review processes. 

Prohibitive transport costs, inconsistent contact details, lack of adequate internet access and long queues at Sassa offices mean that people are losing their lifelines because they cannot jump through bureaucratic hoops. 

Slashing of grants

The US Doge-style slashing of grants, including the child support, disability and old age pension, under National Treasury’s Targeted and Responsible Savings initiative, will create the exact opposite outcome that increased GBVF spending attempts to achieve. 

It is well known that economic independence increases a woman’s ability to leave an abusive relationship, just as the child support grant serves a safety net for securing child nutrition and combating poverty. Taking away money from grants when millions of women are facing systemic violence, economic exclusion, and the momentous task of unpaid care work provision is cruel. It is in direct opposition to the goal of safer and thriving communities.  

Utilising public outrage surrounding GBVF to manufacture collective agreement for grant cuts is politically convenient and morally bankrupt. You cannot protect women by deepening their economic insecurity. The government cannot treat these issues as separate or a zero-sum game; true gender-responsive budgeting demands that both physical safety and financial survival operate in tandem.

This move also contradicts the state’s outlook on social assistance in the 2026 Gender Budget Statement, which recognises social grants as an indispensable tool for women’s economic empowerment. The statement identifies improving access to social protection, and assessing its effects on women as a key priority. The Department of Social Development was selected as a pilot department to demonstrate how its programmes, particularly social grants, strengthen women’s economic security. 

It forces an inescapable question: what is the point of the Gender Responsive Planning Budgeting Monitoring Evaluation and Auditing Framework if its declarations vanish the moment policy meets practice? What will future Gender Budget Statements look like when GBVF funding injections are proudly lauded as progress, while quietly eroding the social grants declared essential to gender equality in the 2026 Gender Budget Statement? 

The Gender Responsive Planning Budgeting Monitoring Evaluation and Auditing Framework should function, in part, as an early-warning system and reflexive process for the government. If a gender impact assessment had been conducted for the Department of Social Development prior to social grant reviews, it would have demonstrated  the dangerous feedback loop of stripping grants while simultaneously trying to curb violence. 

An evaluative planning tool

Such assessments are an evaluative planning tool designed to analyse how any proposed policy or budget decision will affect different groups before it is implemented. Until the government uses gender-responsive budgeting to assess the impact of fiscal decisions, grand allocation figures in line departments will not be able to deliver results to the very women they are intended to reach. It is precisely why we find ourselves trapped in this cycle time and again. 

The government needs to be intentional about how this framework is being applied, rather than lauding grand-sounding figures like R342.1-billion. Without the development of a gender needs assessment, rigorous evaluation, and cross-departmental collaboration between line departments and agencies, allocations will not deliver progress. 

Gender responsive budgeting acknowledges that budgets can either reduce or increase inequality. Budgeting in a manner that creates competition between GBV interventions and women’s economic security will only serve to produce greater inequality. 

Creating a competition between GBV interventions and grants will produce greater inequality. 

This is not the gender justice women deserve. DM