Gender budgeting and gender mainstreaming in public administrations

Accounting emerged as a neutral science, grounded in the conviction that it could represent reality, free from distortion or evaluative judgment. In its early developments, it was therefore primarily employed as a technical instrument for financial recording and reporting (Smith, 2022). Over time, however, accounting has increasingly been recognized as a “socially constitutive” (Cooper, 1990) technology: rather than merely describing events, it actively contributes to shaping, structuring, and making visible the reality it seeks to represent (Broadbent, 2016). From this perspective, accounting is not only a technical practice of measurement, but a mechanism capable of shaping social structures and organizations, thereby participating in the construction of economic realities (Adams & Harte, 1999). These features also imply that accounting can make inequalities more visible, particularly those related to gender (Broadbent, 1998; Haynes, 2025; Klatzer, 2008; Marx, 2019). For these reasons, accounting practices assume a pivotal role in the management of inequalities and in efforts to overcome them through gender mainstreaming (GM). Gender mainstreaming is a framework adopted by public and private organizations to integrate the gender perspective in all stages of policy development, implementation, and evaluation, thereby ensuring that gender considerations are consistently reflected in decision-making processes. To support the implementation of gender mainstreaming, organizations often rely on gender-oriented accounting practices, such as gender budgeting and gender auditing, which are designed to integrate a gender-sensitive perspective into accounting systems and processes, thereby enhancing planning, resource allocation, accountability, and decision-making (Pulejo, 2011). This transformative potential of accounting was first recognized and applied by scholars of political economy (Addabbo et al., 2010; O’Hagan & Klatzer, 2018; Picchio, 2015), who used budgeting, planning, auditing, and control to expose inequalities and bring them to the forefront of government agendas (Rose, 1991). Accounting practices can indeed translate a non-economic dimension, such as gender disparities, into measurable terms, thereby making it both visible and manageable by public administrations (Marx, 2019). Thus, in the process of gender mainstreaming, accounting assumes a key role. Building on these considerations, this PhD thesis seeks to further examine the transformative role of accounting in the context of gender mainstreaming. The main research questions are as follows: how does accounting contribute to making gender differences visible and measurable? And what are the effects of implementing a gender mainstreaming strategy, together with gender-sensitive accounting tools, not only within organizations but also on the broader social and institutional context in which they operate? The analysis begins with an examination of the concept of gender mainstreaming and its evolution, as this provides the framework within which gender-sensitive practices are developed and implemented. This perspective is essential for understanding the phenomenon from its origins and for clarifying what is meant by gender mainstreaming. The importance of examining the concept of gender mainstreaming stems from the fact that, without this broader gender-oriented perspective, accounting practices would remain isolated tools, unable to fully capture or influence the dynamics of gender inequality (Naciti, 2025). Following the exploration of gender mainstreaming, the second chapter adopts the viewpoint of accounting scholars to assess how, and to what extent, gender-sensitive accounting practices have been studied in accounting and management fields. To this end, a bibliometric systematic literature review (Marzi et al., 2025) is conducted, employing a wide-ranging research string to capture as many accounting studies on gender as possible and to trace the evolution of this research stream. This chapter explores the contributions of accounting scholars to gender-related research, tracing the debate on gender within the accounting field. The review of the existing literature reveals that accounting scholars have thus far primarily focused on the role of women in accounting, highlighting the challenges they face in asserting themselves in relation to the dominant “male accountant” model. This perspective has been explored in relation to various intersections of gender, such as ethnicity, religion and disability. Alongside this stream of research, a more recent line of inquiry investigates the influence of women’s presence in firms’ top positions and their impact on diverse dimensions, including corporate performance, sustainability, and ethics. The evidence suggests that only a small proportion of studies investigate the role of accounting practices in supporting gender-related strategies within organizations. This perspective is explored in greater depth in the third chapter of the study, where the point of observation significantly shifts. This chapter focuses on the specific accounting practices implemented to design and report gender equality within institutions (Addabbo et al., 2021; Brenton, 2023; Jorge & Pimentel, 2021; Klatzer, 2008; Marx, 2019; Polzer et al., 2023a; Polzer & Seiwald, 2021; Rubin & Bartle, 2005). Thus, a targeted literature review is employed to capture research on accounting practices, with particular attention to gender budgeting and its implementation within organizational contexts. The results are presented according to the type of organization that implemented them. In particular, the evidence highlights the role of universities as leaders in the adoption of gender-oriented accounting practices. This finding is not unexpected, as several strong European initiatives have encouraged universities to embark on this path, resulting in institutions that are highly committed to gender equality. At this stage, this thesis focuses more closely on the perspective of universities, examining whether and how the gender awareness processes implemented within these institutions, initiated through the adoption of accounting practices, can generate impacts in the broader contexts in which they operate (Leydesdorff, 2000). This research aim stems from the distinctive role of universities as organizations that, by their nature, interact with a wide range of stakeholders. In addition to their academic communities and students, universities maintain close relationships with firms, other research and higher education institutions, as well as with policymakers and public authorities. As a result, they are uniquely positioned to influence multiple communities and contribute to broader processes of social and cultural change. Despite this potential, existing literature has largely focused on how gender mainstreaming accountability processes are designed and implemented within organizations, while paying limited attention to their broader external impacts, which are more challenging to observe and analyse. To capture the network of relationships and exchanges activated through the implementation of gender mainstreaming strategies, this last chapter adopts the Quadruple Helix framework (Carayannis & Campbell, 2010; Morawska-Jancelewicz, 2022). Traditionally employed to analyse collaboration and knowledge exchange in the field of technological innovation (Hasche et al., 2020), the framework is here applied to examine gender mainstreaming as a form of social innovation (Bellandi et al., 2021), highlighting how universities contribute to the diffusion of gender-sensitive values and practices across their institutional environments. Thus, the fourth chapter examines how universities adopting a gender-aware culture may affect their stakeholders and generate a spill-over effect, fostering greater gender sensitivity in the wider social and organizational environment. From a methodological standpoint, semi-structured interviews (Lee & Humphrey, 2006) were conducted with representatives from universities and research institutes across various European countries to examine how, in different contexts, gender mainstreaming strategies and GB practices have produced varied outcomes. While the results are diverse, it emerges that the adoption of accounting practices alone, without a comprehensive strategy and genuine institutional commitment, risks remaining an isolated initiative, limiting their potential to foster broader gender awareness both within and beyond the institutions. This thesis offers several insights. The first concerns a more theoretical aspect: the topic of gender equality in accounting is often treated as an issue primarily related to the profession of accountants, thereby underestimating the impact that accounting practices can have on the construction of organizational identity and on making the gender gap more or less visible. At the same time, accounting practices can be effectively employed to advance gender equality by supporting planning, resource allocation, process management, and control. This perspective, however, remains underdeveloped in accounting studies. The impacts of adopting such practices is further illustrated through the practical case presented at the end of this work. Within a broader framework of gender mainstreaming strategies, the adoption of accounting gender-oriented practices, such as gender equality plan or gender budget, can genuinely raise awareness and foster change, not only within the organization but also in the broader context in which it operates. This highlights the importance of good accounting practices and their integration within a broader strategy, which can have a wide-reaching impact not only on organizations themselves but also on the environments in which they function.