‘Gender Equality by 2030’ is one of the crucial SDGs (Sustainable Development Goals) to be achieved by all the nations. The attainment of this goal would remain elusive if it is not backed economic empowerment of women. Gender Budgeting System (GBS) is an approach to promote equality through fiscal policies of various Governments. It involves analysing a budget’s differential impact on men and women and allocating money accordingly, as well as setting targets and directing funds to meet them. While feminist advocates have tended to concentrate on laws and social policies, Gender Budgeting focuses on the national purse-strings.

Rationale and Components of GBS – 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. GBS entails dissection of the Government budgets to establish its gender differential impacts and to ensure that gender commitments are translated in to budgetary commitments. The way Government budgets allocate resources, has the potential to transform these gender inequalities. In view of this, Gender Budgeting, as a tool for achieving gender mainstreaming, has been propagated.

The Gender Budget Statement (GBS) issued by Expenditure Division of the Ministry of Finance as ‘Statement 20’ comprises of two parts: ‘Part A’ reflects women-specific schemes with 100% allocation for women, and ‘Part B’ is constituted by pro-women schemes wherein at least 30% of allocation is for women. The formal adoption of Gender Budgeting in India has occurred in year 2005-06. Consequently, 57 government ministries/departments have already set up Gender Budget cells – a major step that could potentially impact the lives of crores of women. More than 16 State Governments in India have already adopted the Gender Budgeting system in their budgets. The recently published Economic Survey 2017-18 (pink coloured) has incorporated a special chapter on gender, highlighting the issue of ‘meta preference for a son’ leading to missing, unwanted girls and the decline of women’s participation in the workforce. Also, the Gender Budget allocation for FY 2018-19 is Rs 1,21,961 crore vis-a-vis Rs 1,13,311 crore  in 2017-18, which as a percentage of total expenditure is only around 5%.

Mixed Reality – 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. The chapter on gender parity in the Economic Survey should be commended for its ability to articulate two of the most urgent issues — meta preference for a son leading to missing, unwanted girls and the decline of women’s participation in the workforce. While both issues can be located in societal and immovable cultural norms, they can be equally located in movable economic systems and structures.

Addressing these barriers will need the gamut of stakeholders to converge and convene to develop a nuanced and shared understanding of structural barriers and addressing them through concrete initiatives. Gender Budgeting is an important and effective strategy to advance women’s rights. Government of India adopted GBS in year 2005-06 with the introduction of its first gender budget statement, which made public the quantum of funds allocated by different ministries, and departments for gender equality and women’s empowerment. Consequently, 57 government ministries/departments in India have set up Gender Budget cells. However, it is critical to analyse the entire planning, budgeting and auditing spectrum to assess the extent to which the budgetary allocations are benefiting women and girls.

Though the Ministry of Women and Child Development has also come up with guidelines for integrating gender budgeting into beneficiary-oriented schemes, there are number of challenges in achieving gender parity. Firstly, there is limited availability of disaggregated gender-specific data sets for all schemes and programmes under various ministries. Secondly, the budgeting exercise is linked to the schemes instead of outcomes. Thirdly, 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. Fourthly, 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. There is also a critical need for capacity building across governments, corporate sector, public sector undertakings, NGOs and all the stakeholders.

Amidst the mountain of challenges in achieving gender parity through Gender Budgeting, steps are being taken to mainstream the gender budgeting process at the central and state government level and there is a definite need to deepen this process. A national-level reporting platform needs to be created under the Ministry of Statistics and Programme Implementation, which should collect the disaggregated data by sex for understanding the impact and outcome of the gender budgeting initiative. The Gender Budgeting System is surely a step in right direction towards women’s empowerment.

(The author of this article ,Lt Col (Dr) Satish Dhage, is an ex Army officer and has been qualified for IPS (Indian Police Services) through IPS LCE 2012. Presently, he is Director, MGM Institute of Competitive Exams Aurangabad. For any queries or feedback, he can be contacted on email id : drsatishdhage@gmail.com)