Roadmap for Answer Writing
1. Introduction
- Define Gender Budgeting: Explain the concept of gender budgeting and its significance.
- Purpose: State the objectives of gender budgeting.
2. What Gender Budgeting Entails
- Integration of Gender Perspective: Describe how gender perspectives are incorporated in budget planning.
- Key Objectives:
- Promote accountability and transparency.
- Encourage gender-responsive participation in budget preparation.
- Advance gender equality and women’s rights.
3. Implementation in India
- Introduction of Gender Budget Statement (GBS): Mention its introduction in the Union Budget in 2005-06 as a key step for gender-sensitive budgeting in India.
4. Challenges in the Indian Context
- Insufficient Resources: Discuss the low allocation of gender budgeting as a percentage of GDP (approximately 0.7% from 2008-09 to 2019-20) (Source: Ministry of Finance).
- Concentration in Specific Sectors: Highlight that a significant proportion (85-90%) is focused on a few ministries such as Rural Development, Education, Health, and MWCD (Source: Gender Budget Report).
- Methodological Inaccuracies: Mention issues with the GBS in generating adequate sex-disaggregated data and the need for a more comprehensive approach (Source: Gender Budget Statements).
- Weak Accountability Mechanisms: Discuss the lack of effective measures in assessing the impact of allocations for female beneficiaries and limited parliamentary intervention (Source: Parliamentary Standing Committee Reports).
- Lack of Political Will: Emphasize the need for political commitment to embed gender budgeting further (Source: Policy Analysis Group).
5. Suggestions for Improvement
- State-Level Ranking: Propose a ranking system for states to incentivize gender budgeting.
- Capacity Building: Suggest enhancing technical support for Gender Budgeting Cells at the state level.
- Gender Audits: Recommend conducting gender audits of central schemes and flagship programs.
- Monitoring Outcomes: Encourage better tracking of budget allocations versus actual spending.
6. Conclusion
- Summary of Importance: Reiterate that despite challenges, gender budgeting is critical for women’s empowerment in India.
- Call for Ongoing Assessment: Stress the need for periodic evaluation of budgeting practices to stay relevant and effective.
The Union Budget 2023-24 has been presented in the Parliament. In 2005, the Government had started releasing a Gender Budget along with the Union budget. Gender Budgeting is a strategy to ensure that promises on gender equality show up in public budget allocations as well. However, achieving gender equality through Gender Budgeting has remained a challenge. The share of Gender Budget (in total Government Budget) has remained low despite growing at an annualized rate 13% since inception. With some reforms in the implementation, the Government can improve the efficacy of Gender Budgeting in terms of outcomes.
It observes that, “Gender Budgeting is concerned with gender-sensitive formulation of legislation, policies, plans, programmes and schemes; allocation and collection of resources; implementation and execution; monitoring, review, audit and impact assessment of programmes and schemes; and follow-up corrective action to address gender disparities.” It is not only about the Budget and it is not just a one-time activity. It is a continuous process that must be applied to all levels and stages of the policy process.
Model Answer
What is Gender Budgeting?
Gender budgeting refers to the incorporation of a gender perspective throughout the budgetary process, with the aim of promoting gender equality by restructuring revenues and expenditures. The objectives of gender budgeting include promoting accountability and transparency in fiscal planning, enhancing gender-responsive participation in budget preparation, and advancing gender equality and women’s rights (Source: Government of India, Union Budget 2005-06).
In India, the initiative began with the introduction of the Gender Budget Statement (GBS) in the Union Budget for 2005-06, marking a significant step towards integrating gender perspectives into financial decision-making.
Challenges in the Indian Context
Despite its potential, gender budgeting in India faces several challenges:
Despite these hurdles, gender budgeting serves as a crucial tool for evaluating government spending on women’s empowerment, reflecting India’s endeavor towards achieving gender equality goals. Continuous reassessment of budgeting strategies is vital to adapt to emerging needs and trends effectively.
Gender budgeting is a fiscal policy approach that aims to analyze the impact of government budgets on gender equality and allocate resources to promote women’s empowerment. In India, it was introduced in 2005 to ensure that budgetary allocations consider gender-specific needs, recognizing that economic policies often overlook women’s contributions and challenges.
Despite its intent, gender budgeting in India faces several challenges. First, there is a lack of comprehensive data on gender-disaggregated statistics, which hampers effective policy formulation and assessment. For example, the National Family Health Survey reveals persistent disparities in health and education, yet budget allocations often do not address these gaps adequately.
Second, many government departments lack gender expertise, resulting in insufficient integration of gender perspectives in their planning and implementation. For instance, funds allocated for women’s development may not reach the grassroots level due to bureaucratic inefficiencies and corruption.
Lastly, societal norms and gender biases can undermine the effectiveness of gender budgeting. Cultural resistance to women’s empowerment can limit the political will to prioritize gender-sensitive initiatives.
In conclusion, while gender budgeting has potential, overcoming data deficiencies, bureaucratic inertia, and societal attitudes remains crucial for its success in India.
Gender budgeting refers to the process of planning, allocating, and evaluating government resources to address gender inequalities and promote gender equity. It involves analyzing the impact of public policies, programs, and budgets on women, men, and gender minorities to ensure that financial resources contribute to reducing gender disparities. By integrating a gender perspective into the budgetary process, governments can address issues such as access to education, healthcare, employment, and social security, which disproportionately affect women.
In India, gender budgeting has been incorporated into national and state-level fiscal planning since 2005. However, several challenges hinder its effectiveness. One significant issue is the limited awareness and understanding of gender-sensitive planning among policymakers, leading to inadequate prioritization. Additionally, the lack of sex-disaggregated data makes it difficult to measure the impact of budget allocations on different gender groups. Further, gender budgeting is often treated as a token exercise, with insufficient funds allocated for programs that truly benefit women. Moreover, traditional social norms and patriarchal structures continue to impede the inclusion of women in decision-making processes, limiting their influence on policy and resource distribution. To overcome these challenges, India requires stronger political will, improved capacity building, and better monitoring mechanisms.
Gender budgeting adopts a gender perspective at every level of the budgeting cycle and redesigns revenues and expenditures to improve gender equality through gender-based allocations.
Objectives of gender budgeting are threefold:
• Enhance accountability and transparency in fiscal planning.
• Improve gender-responsive participation in budget-making, for example, by taking measures that ensure women and men have equal participation in budget development.
• Enhanced gender equality and women’s rights.
• The Government of India incorporated Gender Budget Statement (GBS) in the Union Budget during 2005-06 to introduce gender responsive budgeting in India’s budgeting system.
Despite all such efforts, several problems still persist in implementing gender budgeting in India, which include:
• Less resources: The amount allocated in the gender budget quantitatively is substantial but less if the overall remains only little below 1% of GDP. The gender budget average worked out to about 0.7% of the GDP over the 2008-09 to 2019-20 period.
• Concentration of funds in a few sectors: In the last decades, four ministries – Rural Development, Education, Health and MWCD have received between 85-90% of the Gender Budget expenditure. This pattern of allocation is a kind of concentration of funds in a few sectors instead of the widespread gender balanced budget.
• Methodological inaccuracies: There are some methodological inaccuracies identified in the GBS. Even though sex-disaggregated data are available, further information needs to be generated, specifically relating to access to resources and opportunities without which is not possible to integrate a gender perspective into budgeting.
• Accountability mechanisms: Though the release of GBS is made mandatory, effective accountability mechanism to mandate the impact assessment of allocations for female beneficiaries are inoperative. Parliamentary interventions are not also very effective as the role of Legislatures in the budgetary process is often confined in approval and oversight and never in formulation and execution.
• Lack of political will to institutionalize gender budgeting: Gender budgeting requires political will to facilitate a process of changing the traditional budget-making and policy processes by eliminating long-standing, in-built biases.
The government has taken some initiatives like the constitution of Gender Budgeting Cell (GBCs), creation of Gender Data Bank etc., but much more is required in this regard to achieve the objectives of gender budgeting. These include:
•Provide state level gender budgeting a ranking to encourage states for further steps to be taken towards the effectiveness of these measures.
•Provide state-level Gender Budgeting Cells with capacity building and technical support
•The Gender audits of centrally sponsored schemes and flagship programs are undertaken to measure impacts
•Bridging the gap between allocation of budget and spending properly, through monitoring outcomes.