A significant milestone achieved worldwide, economically and politically in the past century, was the entry of women into activities, previously undertaken almost entirely by men. Although many countries are making strides in eliminating gender disparities, it is still pronounced in parts of the developing world. Women are still encumbered by economic involvement and political participation. The international community, starting from the United Nations Convention on the Elimination of all forms of Discrimination against Women, in 1979, to the recent Millenium Development Goals and Sustainable Development Goals set by the United Nations, have committed to achieving gender equality and the advancement of women, universally.
Gender Budgeting is one of the many strategies employed by governments to ensure that the promises of gender equality and empowerment appear in public budget allocations as well, using fiscal policy and administration. This establishes gender commitments and translates them into budgetary commitments, which helps better quantify spending on gender-focused policies. Gender-responsive budgets, along with other policy measures, effectively supported by local laws could help governments analyse whether public spending on these areas is well harnessed in furthering gender equality. Gender budget has seen widespread growth across the globe, with over 80 countries employing different variants of gender budgeting in their mainstream budgets.
Many countries have taken different routes to gender budgeting based on the funding and gender advancement levels of the countries and thus are flexible and reflective of not just the status of women, but also administrative capabilities. India introduced a Gender Budget along with the Union Budget in the year 2005-06 and stands as one of the countries with a prominent gender budget across the world.
Since its inclusion, gender budgeting trends in India have not seen large changes and have remained sticky for the most part. The allocation to gender budgets as a proportion of Gender Budget to Total Budget has stayed constant between 4.3% and 5.9%, and this has perennially remained less than 5% in the last few years.
Figure 1 - Gender Budget as a % of Total Expenditure Budget
Source: Union Budget Statements, https://www.indiabudget.gov.in/. Note: All the other values are revised estimates, except for the year 2023-24.
The Gender Budget of India consists of two parts; Part A includes the list of schemes with 100% allocation for women, Part B with schemes allocating at least 30% for women, and Part B majorly dominates over the other, with two-thirds allocation. This allocation under two parts is majorly skewed, and the proportion of allocations to Part A has constantly been declining over the years, and shows us how schemes wholly women-specific still do not form a major part of the gender budget, and are just a small proportion of the same.
Systematically, Gender Budgets thus far released in India have had major loopholes, apart from the allocation aspect. A cursory look at the allocation of gender budgets towards various schemes gives us great insights into how these budgets have concentrated on certain specific schemes only, including the Pradhan Mantri Awaaz Yojana, Mahatma Gandhi National Rural Employment Guarantee Scheme, the Samagra Shiksha Scheme, that already top the list in budgetary allocations and has left out key schemes that require due attention in making livelihoods for women better. Schemes like the Jal Jeevan Mission help provide better access to tap water, which majorly women fetch for their household in rural India. MSMEs and Entrepreneurship for women, and other safety-related schemes have been left out of the radar. The spending on Pradhan Mantri Awas Yojana accounted for a large part of the gender budget, but the scheme that aims at providing affordable housing to urban poor doesn’t directly benefit women.
Another important dimension in support of Gender Budgeting is it can incorporate the time women spend on non-market, care activities economy formally into the policy system, recognising the importance of unpaid work in homes as an important part of the economy. India’s gender budget failed to tap the potential of Gender Budgeting as a tool to organise, and formalise informal, unpaid, care-work given by women, thus failing to bring this aspect into mainstream policymaking.
Moreover, increased allocation in the budget to specific women-related programmes does not automatically mean higher spending on the schemes. Furthermore, the focus in the gender budget does not include much on monitoring of the schemes and accountability to ensure their effectiveness. India’s gender budget does not even consider the realities of life of women in India, and how it plays out in society, and has no record of improvement of the day-to-day lives of women.
Making the gender budget fool-proof, therefore, becomes imperative on the part of the government to ensure tapping into the wide array of benefits gender budgeting offers. Incorporating gender budgets into the administration and management of the budget authority, ensuring transparency, and making programme-specific allocations, with amounts earmarked for various stages in program implementation to administration can increase the efficiency and spending on gender budgets.
Shanmuga Priya
