Day 44 – Q 2.What do you understand by ‘gender budgeting’? Examine its significance in the Indian socio-economic context.

2. What do you understand by ‘gender budgeting’? Examine its significance in the Indian socio-economic context.  

जेंडर बजटिंग से आप क्या समझते हैं? भारतीय सामाजिक–आर्थिक संदर्भ में इसके महत्व का परीक्षण करें।

Introduction:

Gender budgeting (GB) means preparing budgets or analyzing them from a gender perspective. Gender Budgeting is a powerful tool for achieving gender mainstreaming so as to ensure that benefits of development reach women as much as men. It is not an accounting exercise but an ongoing process of keeping a gender perspective in policy/ programme formulation, its implementation and review. 

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 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 socio-economic context

• 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. Hence, they warrant special attention due to their vulnerability and lack of access to resources.
• Global Gender Gap report 2018 ranked India 108 in terms of inequality in economy, education, health and political representation.
• Poor socio-economic indicator of women – 
  • Literacy –  female ~ 65%;  male ~ 80% (2011 census)
  • Males get more medical care compared to girls
  • Son meta preference (less opportunity to come to the world)
  • Child marriage ~ 27% (UNICEF)
  • Female labour force participation rate ~ 26% (Niti Aayog)
  • Gender pay gap ~ 34% (ILO)
  • Glass ceiling
  • Feminization of informal sector and de-feminization of formal sector.   
  • female representation in Parliament ~ 99th in the world
  • Lok Sabha ~ 12%; Rajya Sabha ~ 11%.
• 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 is in ‘‘gender neutral sectors”.

Challenges involved in Gender Budgeting

• There is limited availability of disaggregated gender-specific data sets for all schemes and programmes.
• The budgeting exercise is linked to schemes instead of outcomes. For example, in the Budgets 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.
• It is important to understand time-bound goals for parameters such as female school enrolment, gender-based violence, health, labour force participation.
• Authority should be created for gender auditing

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.