Gender and Rural Development Budgets

This chapter looks into the participation of rural women in the formation of rural development policies in the Netherlands. The first section describes (i) how many women participate in the design of regional Reconstruction plans and programmes in the province of Gelderland, (ii) which interest they defend, and (iii) how rural women managed to enter the policy-making process. The second presents a gender budget analysis of the Reconstruction programmes. It is demonstrated that the assumed participatory character of the decision-making process does not support women's participation; neither does it demonstrate responsiveness of policies to women's needs. The chapter concludes by discussing the consequences of the exclusion of women for the quality of the policy-making process as a whole, and the significance of the problems rural women experience for the functioning of new rural governance models in general.