I think it's critical. One of the themes you hear over and over again is the lack of data. Many of these organizations are working on how to build these databases where an excuse can't be given of, “We don't know”, or “We can't do anything because we don't know how we're affecting men and women differently”, and some of these groups are actively involved in data collection.
But it's really interesting. I ran out of time before, but I just want to mention something. Somebody else had asked me about where else this is taking place in the United States. An interesting place where gender budgeting is taking place is in Korea, and that's where I met Janet.
The reason I'm bringing this up is that in Korea there is actually a gender budget research centre that is part of the Korean Women's Development Institute, which is actually part of the governmental structure. Since Korea is under mandate to have a gender-informed budget in place by the year 2010, they felt this was something they wanted to set up.
So I would go even further. Not only do I think NGOs should receive funding, but I think if this effort is really going to be undertaken, there should be a concerted way to see if there could be some sort of research centre funded that focuses specifically on gender budgeting.
I know in Canada there are very active women's groups; they're all over the country. But I think it would be very useful to think of perhaps a gender budget research centre.