Budget Support Through a Gender Lens: The Case of EU Development Cooperation with Botswana

How does the European Union (EU) include gender equality within its budget support? This article examines budget support as an aid instrument through a gender lens by taking on the case of EU development cooperation with Botswana. The aim is to demonstrate how budget support plays out in practice and to analyse its consequences for the EU’s global commitments on gender equality. I assess budget support with a feminist institutionalist approach combining an analysis of process and content. The article concludes that the EU cannot achieve a genuine accountability to women in the practice of its budget support resulting in a limited female ownership. While the EU aims to be a forerunner in the promotion of gender equality, this is not matched by the EU’s external services on the ground which tend to be gender-blind. In the context of a masculine state apparatus, the use of budget support becomes problematic as the voices of women and their movements are being structurally marginalised.