Gender budgeting (GB) is a practice that accounts budgetary measures to support gender commitments. It is not just an accounting exercise but an ongoing process of keeping a gender perspective in policy/ programme formulation, its implementation and review. GB entails dissection of the Government budgets to establish its gender differential impacts and to ensure that gender commitments are translated in to budgetary commitments.

Body:

Since 2005-06, the Expenditure Division of the Ministry of Finance has been issuing a note on Gender Budgeting as a part of the Budget Circular every year. This GB Statement comprises two parts- Part A and Part B.

Part A reflects Women Specific Schemes, i.e. those which have 100% allocation for women.

Part B reflects Pro Women Schemes, i.e. those where at least 30% of the allocation is for women.

Significance in the Indian context:

• Global Gender Gap report 2018 ranked India 108 in terms of inequality in economy, education, health and political representation.
• The rationale for gender budgeting arises from recognition of the fact that national budgets impact men and women differently through the pattern of resource allocation.
• Women, constitute 48% of India’s population, but they lag behind men on many social indicators like health, education, economic opportunities, etc.
• All measures across the globe taken towards development, poverty alleviation and improvement of social indicators like health, education and gender equality are worthless unless policies are implemented specifically for women and girls.
• Women face disparities in access to and control over services and resources.
• Bulk of the public expenditure and policy concerns are in ‘‘gender neutral sectors”.

Challenges involved in Gender – Budgeting:

• First, there is limited availability of disaggregated gender-specific data sets for all schemes and programmes under various ministries. In the absence of this data, it is difficult to study the impact of budgetary allocations on gender equality.
• Second, the budgeting exercise is linked to schemes instead of outcomes. For example, in the Budget for 2015-16 there are funds allocated for infrastructure maintenance under the ministry of health and family welfare. However, there is very little data available on the impact these funds made in reducing female mortality rates.
• Third, there is an immediate need to conduct an assessment of gender-specific parameters and set goals accordingly. For example, it is important to understand time-bound goals for parameters such as female school enrolment, gender-based violence, health, labour force participation.
• Fourth, authority should be created for gender auditing, to conduct an annual impact assessment of budgetary allocations for all schemes, thus bringing accountability to the process.

Way forward:

• There is also a critical need for capacity building across government, corporates, public sector undertakings, NGOs and all involved agencies.
• While steps have been taken to mainstream the gender budgeting process at central and state government level, there is a definite need to deepen this process.
• A national-level reporting platform should be created under the ministry of statistics and programme implementation, which will collect the disaggregated data by sex for understanding the impact and outcome of the gender budgeting initiative.
• The Central Statistics Office should also be engaged for better data collection and analysis techniques.
• Shared responsibility between the central and state governments would accelerate this process.
• There needs to be shift from mere “reporting” of gender allocations to “purposive planning” with wider participation of women.
• The adoption of the GB should be accompanied by multifaceted and interrelated improvements to budgets in general and the gender sensitivity of budgets.

Conclusion:

Gender Budgeting is a powerful tool for achieving gender mainstreaming so as to ensure that benefits of development reach women as much as men. The way Government budgets allocate resources, has the potential to transform these gender inequalities.