Global military spending has nearly doubled in a decade, while official development assistance is projected to fall by 31 per cent between 2024 and 2029. Defence budgets remain among the least transparent areas of public spending. Many Member States and their armed forces have adopted Women, Peace and Security (WPS) policies, yet only 29 of the 113 countries with a WPS National Action Plan included a budget at adoption.

This brief, by Gretchen Baldwin (SIPRI) shows how WPS commitments can be made concrete within defence budgeting systems.  

It proposes a framework that groups WPS-related military spending into three categories: gender equality and women's participation within the institution; the WPS commitments adopted by defence, including protection and relief and recovery; and contribution to global WPS goals such as conflict prevention and civilian protection.

Rather than creating a standalone budget line, it shows how gender analysis can be built into all five phases of the budgeting cycle, from policy design to evaluation.

Practical steps include gender advisers in planning meetings, gender impact assessments at budget approval, gender-disaggregated data during execution, and gender-responsive audits. These draw on accountability mechanisms that ministries, armed forces and oversight bodies already use.  

The brief warns of two risks.
- "Enclosure" would isolate WPS in a separate budget line, cut off from core spending decisions.
- "Securitisation" would make defence the primary interpreter and implementer of WPS, narrowing the agenda and separating it further from civilian prevention and peacebuilding.
Engagement with defence must therefore be strategic and conditional.    

Recommendations are addressed to defence institutions, parliamentarians and civil society, and researchers. They include linking WPS plans to budget processes, developing qualitative gender indicators, publishing gender budget statements where possible, reporting WPS spending as a visible line, and fully resourcing gender expertise. Parliamentarians and civil society are urged to scrutinise military and non-military spending together, so that defence growth does not come at the expense of development and social funding.    

The brief frames the choice facing WPS advocates as neither disengagement nor capitulation. Engagement anchored in existing transparent, accountable budgeting systems offers a way to redirect resources and strengthen governance of rising military expenditure.