Costing is an emerging area of research within efforts to address and prevent violence against women, whereby researchers and advocates are working to measure the economic impact of such violence, from both a specific financial point of view (unit costing) and a broader societal perspective (impact costing).

The methodology presented in this manual is focused on costing the implementation of services and responses to address violence against women in a country or region for the purposes of public budgeting. While the building blocks for this manual come from existing studies, the final product is an entirely new approach that takes into account the legal and institutional structures in place in a given country, in order to link them to funding that governments, NGOs and international and bilateral donors are directing towards violence against women-related services.

This manual contains sections on:
• The conceptual and theoretical framework.
• Module 1: Environmental Scan – Legislative and Policy Analysis.
• Module 2: Evidence – Research and Data.
• Module 3: Referrals and Protocols for survivors of violence against women.
• Module 4: Analysing the budget (five steps).