Women in Public Finance

Public finance is often considered a discipline where numbers, efficiency, and productivity talk. And while gender budgeting, a field of public financial management (PFM), has gained increasing attention in recent years, the personal stories of the women driving this work have remained largely invisible. This is the first book to share unprecedented insider narratives from the women shaping public finance and public policy.

It brings together the stories and conversations of 22 professional women from around the globe who are all working in the fields of PFM and gender budgeting, a space largely dominated by men. These authentic first-person accounts provide rare insights into both the barriers and breakthroughs experienced by women in a field traditionally dominated by technical discourse and masculine perspectives. It demonstrates how women's presence at decision-making tables directly opens the discussions on inclusive, sustainable, and effective public finance outcomes. It provides:

• Authentic insights into gender representation in PFM and how it can be advanced within the structures of public finance—from ministries of finance to donor agencies and civil society.
• Encouragement and strategic guidance in navigating leadership, reform fatigue, and institutional resistance, particularly women and underrepresented groups.
• A storytelling approach, helping readers to relate to this largely technical area.
• Concrete examples of successful reform and personal stories of resilience, valuable for professionals creating capacity-building programs, applying change management, or shaping institutional culture.

This important book is for public finance professionals, civil servants, economists, gender policy advisors, donor agency staff, civil society organizations, and graduate students in gender studies, public policy, governance, and development programs, providing both inspiration and practical pathways for creating more equitable financial systems worldwide.

Maja Bosnić is a senior economist with over two decades of experience in public and corporate financial management, specialising in gender and climate-responsive budgeting. She led one of the world's largest projects on gender budgeting, the Gender Budgeting in Ukraine Project, funded by the Swedish Government, from 2013 to 2020. She has collaborated with major international financial institutions, including the International Monetary Fund (IMF) and the World Bank Group. She is the co-founder of Claim.Impact, a consultancy firm specialising in green and gender budgeting. She is a sought-after speaker on the intersection of gender and finance, delivering a highly viewed TED Talk at the TEDWomen Conference in Palm Springs in 2021, which has garnered close to 2 million views.

Manal Fouad is a former Assistant Director and Division Chief at the IMF’s Fiscal Affairs Department, with over 30 years of experience in fiscal policy and capacity development in the public financial management and budgeting area around the world. She has numerous publications including as co-editor of the book Well Spent: How Strong Infrastructure Governance Can End Waste in Public Investment. She has represented the IMF in various international fora, including the G20 Infrastructure Working Group.