Gender Budget Is A Good Start, But Women In India Need More

It’s been 30 years since the adoption of the Beijing Platform for Action, a landmark policy framework to promote gender equality and women’s rights.

However, according to the Global Gender Gap Index, 2024 by the World Economic Forum, the world is far from achieving full gender parity. The annual report benchmarks the current state of gender parity across four key aspects – economic participation and opportunity, educational attainment, health and survival, and political empowerment.

Based on current data, it will take a staggering 134 years to reach full parity – roughly five generations beyond the 2030 Sustainable Development Goal target, the report states.

Hence, political commitment to gender-equality needs to be backed up by strong fiscal commitments.

One way to do that is through gender-responsive budgeting — aligning budget allocations with gender-focused goals.

This approach entails mainstreaming gender considerations into the budgeting process, particularly through resource allocation. 

The point is to transform gender commitments into fiscal actions, ensuring policies and resource distribution are gender-sensitive and meet specific needs within existing frameworks.

Gender budgeting began in Australia, where it was introduced in the budget of 1983-84. Since then, the Australian government has continued to prioritise gender budgeting as a core policy.

For emerging economies, addressing gender inequality through public policy becomes even more crucial.

Many Asian countries such as the Philippines and South Korea have made significant strides in gender-responsive budgeting.

This year, India too will mark two decades of gender budgeting. The country has made significant investments in the welfare of women and girls, but more needs to be done to achieve the goals of gender equality.

Early start and steady growth

In India, the ratification of the Convention on the Elimination of All Forms of Discrimination Against Women in 1993 brought gender equality to the centre of development discourses. The convention requires governments to commit to removing all forms of discrimination against women and achieve full gender equality.

The process of gender budgeting began in 2001 as a chapter on gender inequality in the government’s Economic Survey document. It was institutionalised in 2005-06, with the first ever gender budget statement indicating the budgetary provisions for schemes meant for the benefit of women.

The ministry of finance also decided to establish a gender budget cell across all ministries in the same year.

Two decades later, the intent seems to be backed by action – the government has set aside a significant amount of Rs 4.49 lakh crores this year, up from Rs. 3.27 lakh crore allocated in the last financial year, for the welfare of women and girls.

This year, a higher number of ministries and government departments have allocated money for women and girls – 49, as compared to 38 in the previous year.

This is the highest number of ministries and departments reporting allocations since the gender budget statement was introduced.

More significantly, it marks a 37 percent increase from last year.

This is, however, a mere 8.86 percent of the government’s total budget, up by two percent from last year.

Falling behind 

Despite these efforts, gender equality continues to be an elusive development outcome for India.

In 2024, the country’s rank in the Global Gender Gap report slipped to 129, down from 127 in 2023.

India has closed 64.1 percent of its gender gap in 2024, indicating that the country has travelled some distance towards the goal of full gender parity. However, it still ranks behind countries such as Bangladesh, Nepal, Sri Lanka and Bhutan.

Though India performs relatively better on the indices of education, and health and survival, it needs to improve on the economic participation and opportunity and political empowerment index.

Economic parity in India continues to be among the lowest, similar to countries such as Bangladesh, Sudan, Iran, Pakistan and Morocco, with gender parity in estimated earned income being under 30 percent.

The labor force participation rate also remains below 50 percent.

Bridging gender gaps in areas such as earned income, legislative and managerial roles, labor force participation and professional or technical workforce would require extensive measures.

For instance, bridging the gap in workforce participation would require enabling women to access productive resources such as land, labour, capital, assets, infrastructure, building their technical, professional and entrepreneurial capabilities, and generating jobs.

From a budgetary perspective, some interventions have been made – over half of this year’s budget for the government’s skill development program, the national rural livelihoods scheme and the scheme to support traditional artisans is dedicated to women.

The gender budget component of the government’s rural jobs scheme has also risen from Rs 28,888.67 crore to Rs 40,000 crore this year.

One-third (33.65 percent) of the money set aside for the national employment scheme has been allocated to benefit women, an allocation which is expected to be hiked to 46 percent this year. Currently, women comprise over half (57 percent) of the workers benefiting from the scheme.

More women are also part of the overall workforce now — 41.7 percent in 2023-24, a number that has shown substantive increase.

However, the quality of employment remains an area of concern, with 67 percent women reporting self-employment. Over 50 percent of them are unpaid helpers in household enterprises such as family-owned businesses.

India ranks among the top 10 in the political empowerment subindex for the head-of-state indicator (40.7 percent), which takes into account women holding official posts such as Presidents and Prime Ministers.

However, it fares poorly on the overall political empowerment index – with women’s representation remaining low at the federal level. Women occupy only 6.9 percent ministerial positions and 17.2 percent seats in the parliament.

The scenario is somewhat reassuring at the local level – women’s participation is significant at the panchayat (local self-government) level, with the 73rd constitutional amendment ensuring one-third of seats in local self-government are reserved for women.

This has resulted in a considerable number of elected female representatives, positioning India among leading nations in terms of female participation in local governance.

By leveraging the potential of women leaders at the local level, India can advance gender-specific policies and address the needs of rural women more effectively.

Need for sustained investments

Though India caught on to gender budgeting early on, it still requires continuous efforts and strategic investments to achieve true gender equality.

To effectively eliminate gender inequality, gender budgets should focus on addressing practical and strategic gender needs.

Access to clean cooking gas, piped drinking water and clean sanitation has positive health outcomes, reduces women’s drudgery and experience of time poverty from gendered household chores. Time poverty refers to a lack of sufficient time for paid labour or social and leisure activities, due to the time spent on unpaid activities such as household labour and caregiving.

Addressing strategic gender needs would require sustained investments in girls’ education, technical skill building, capacity building on entrepreneurship, managerial and leadership abilities, and infrastructural investments for mobility and safety.

Fiscal commitment to addressing these needs would help overcome structural and systemic barriers to gender equality and bridge the gender gap in economic participation and political empowerment.

(Published under Creative Commons by 360info™. Read the original article here)