As Guyana rides a wave of rapid economic expansion driven by its burgeoning petroleum industry, a leading grassroots women’s rights and empowerment organization is sounding the alarm that the country’s 2026 GY$1.558 trillion national budget fails to address deep-rooted systemic disparities that disproportionately harm marginalized groups.
Tamùkke Feminists has published its landmark *Feminist Budget Analysis (FBA)*, titled *An Intersectional Feminist Desk Analysis of Guyana’s 2026 National Budget: Health, Environment and Equity*, compiled by economic analysts Jayda Overton and Sequoia Peniston. The report comes at a defining crossroads for Guyana, which has seen its fiscal space expand dramatically from a GY$1.146 trillion budget in 2024 to this year’s trillion-dollar allocation, fueled by new oil revenues. Yet the analysis makes clear that increased spending alone does not deliver more equitable outcomes: most budget allocations remain intentionally gender-neutral in design and rollout, with no systematic redirection of resources to dismantle structural inequality.
Unlike conventional budget audits that focus solely on total spending figures, the FBA examines Guyana’s fiscal priorities through an intersectional feminist framework, asking critical questions that have often been overlooked: who stands to benefit from public spending, who is systematically excluded, and whose unpaid labor goes unaccounted for in national planning.
On-the-ground case studies underscore these gaps. In the South Rupununi community of Parabara, for example, all sampled Indigenous residents tested showed elevated mercury levels linked to unregulated mining activity, with women recording some of the highest toxin concentrations. This finding illustrates how the environmental harm of extractive development falls disproportionately on marginalized groups, a pattern repeated across multiple policy areas.
The report documents layered barriers to equitable care across the country: women in remote hinterland and rural regions face compounded obstacles to accessing basic healthcare and reproductive services; Lesbian, Bisexual and Trans+ (LBT+) women are systematically excluded from mainstream public health systems; and Indigenous communities bear the brunt of industrial environmental damage without access to equal regulatory protection.
Tamùkke’s analysis identifies three overarching structural gaps that Guyana’s future national planning must urgently address to advance equity. First is a persistent distributional gap: despite overall spending growth, remote hinterland regions still face extreme travel distances, exorbitant transportation costs, and severe shortages of specialized healthcare services. Second is a prevention gap: public investment consistently prioritizes hospital infrastructure and emergency response over community-based care, reproductive health services and environmental monitoring, shifting the burden of risk management onto households – and disproportionately onto women, who take on the majority of unpaid care work to offset this underinvestment. Third is an inclusion gap: Indigenous communities, LGBTQ+ people and people living with disabilities remain largely invisible in official budget allocation frameworks.
These gaps are not theoretical. Even after the passage of the Medical Termination of Pregnancy Act legalized abortion access nationwide, the report notes that services remain geographically concentrated in just three regions, leaving most women in hinterland areas completely cut off from legal care, proving that legal reform alone cannot guarantee equitable access. The analysis also found that LBT+ women across Guyana face widespread barriers to accessing accurate sexual health information, cervical cancer screening and bodily autonomy, a gap worsened by the absence of comprehensive sexuality education in national public education programming.
“Budgets are inherently political documents – they reflect the government’s explicit choices about whose needs are treated as urgent, and whose are pushed to the side,” explained Akola Thompson, Managing Director of Tamùkke Feminists, in a formal press release. “A feminist lens simply makes these choices visible for all to see.”
Thompson emphasized that the FBA is not intended as a blanket criticism of the government’s fiscal expansion efforts. Instead, the organization frames it as a practical planning tool to guide more equitable policy going forward. “Our core finding is that Guyana’s economic transformation is outpacing its social transformation,” Thompson said. “Without a feminist analysis, this gap goes unnamed, and there is no clear path to correct it.”
“By identifying precisely where and how fiscal expansion is failing to reach marginalized populations, it provides a concrete basis for more targeted, accountable and equitable budget design going forward,” she added.
The report puts forward four clear, actionable recommendations for the government to address the documented gaps:
1. Establish a dedicated gender-responsive budgeting unit within the Ministry of Finance by 2027 to embed equity considerations into all future fiscal planning;
2. Expand legal abortion services beyond the currently served Regions 4, 6 and 9 to guarantee universal access across the country;
3. Roll out routine mercury testing for all residents of mining-impacted communities to address ongoing public health harms from extractive activity;
4. Implement nationwide comprehensive sexuality education, and develop accessible disaster shelters and community-led climate adaptation projects for Indigenous communities disproportionately impacted by environmental harm and climate change.
Thompson noted that these proposals are not abstract policy asks: they are directly tied to documented gaps and measurable harm to women, girls and gender-diverse people across every region of Guyana.
With petroleum revenues dramatically expanding the country’s fiscal capacity, affordability is no longer a credible barrier to reform, Tamùkke argues. The FBA concludes that the central question facing Guyana today is not whether the country can afford to implement inclusive, intersectional budgeting – but whether it can afford not to.
“Integrating inclusive, intersectional budgeting into national planning cycles is not only an imperative for equity,” the organization notes. “It is the foundation for protecting the future of all Guyanese people as the country navigates rapid economic transformation.”