I'm Elise Hugh. You're listening to TED Talks Daily. I have to admit, when I first saw today's talk from TED Women in 2021, I was really surprised by the huge gender gaps in the way public funds, so taxpayer dollars, are distributed.

Public finance expert, Maya Bosnick, lays out the ways money for public health or education

or social programs often doesn't meet its good intentions and what can be done about it.

So I come from Bosnia.

I mean, I live in Sweden now, but you don't need to know my whole life story.

But the story that I do want to share is from my home country. So close to 50% of the land in Bosnia is dedicated to agriculture and farming.

So the government decides to support farmers,

to set up the budget, to set up the requirements

for the people to receive the budget,

and then to disperse the funds.

So they do that, and towards the end of the process,

they decide to analyze who really received these funds.

And they did that, and the Ministry of Agriculture was shocked,

because only one group of citizens received 90% of these funds.

And those were men, men working in agriculture.

So where were the women?

Why didn't they have access to the funds?

The Ministry of Agriculture was surprised because they didn't mean to discriminate.

They knew they were women working in agriculture, right?

So they went back and analyzed the situation.

And the problem was, well, there were three things.

The first thing is they didn't even know the gender of farmers

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