The genesis of this project emerged from a fortuitous meeting between myself and a group of like-minded feminist scholars. We were at the launch of the Australian Federal Labor Party’s 2016 Women’s Budget Statement at Parliament House in Canberra. Australia was a very early adopter of gender-responsive budgeting thanks to the work of Rhonda Sharp and others, but over time, applying a gender lens to the allocation of public finances disappeared from their government’s budgetary process.

It has, however, remained at the forefront of the minds of women scholars and activists committed to gender equality at the state and federal level in Australia, a number of whom were at the launch that day.

From left: Catriona McLennan, Jennifer Curtin, Katie Cammell, Suzy Morrissey, Rhonda Sharp, Margaret Wilson, Helen Hodgson and Prue Hyman

Professor Helen Hodgson was one of those I met, and introduced me to Dr Suzy Morrissey, who was writing on tax, gender and budgeting. Suzy and I had both been inspired by the intrepid scholarly and public intellectual endeavours of Prue Hyman and Marilyn Waring. Together, our determination to work on advancing gender-responsive budgeting in Aotearoa New Zealand began to grow.

In November 2017, summer scholar Katie Cammel and I organised a workshop with experts on effective gender-responsive budgeting process, gaining significant insights from Australian Professors Rhonda Sharp and Helen Hodgson, now emeritus Professors Margaret Wilson and Prue Hyman, and gender equality advocate Catriona McLennan. After co-hosting a follow-up workshop with the New Zealand Treasury with economist Professor Sue Himmelweit (UK Women’s Budget Group) to shape the project further, we recruited Associate Professors Maria Bargh (Victoria University) and Barry Milne (University of Auckland), submitted a grant application and crossed our fingers. In 2018, we won support from the MBIE Smart Ideas Fund to begin our research in earnest.