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“Ensuring gender equality by removing gender discrimination is the real key to real empowerment”. Atal Bihari Bajpai (Social Welfare, March, 2000)
Meaning and Concept:
The term “gender budgeting” has become a catch all phrase to describe various government initiatives that seek to address gender issues in the domain of public expenditure and policy. Two definitions are quoted to introduce the concept.
‘Gender-sensitive budgets’, ‘gender budgets’, and ‘women’s budgets’ refer to a variety of processes and tools aimed at facilitating an assessment of the gendered impacts of government budgets. In the evolution of these exercises, the focus has been on auditing government budgets for their impact on women and girls. This has meant that, to date, the term ‘women’s budget’ has gained widest use. Recently, however, these budget exercises have begun
using gender as a category of analysis so the terminology ‘gender-sensitive budgets’ is increasingly being adopted. It is important to recognize that ’women’s budgets’ or ‘gender-sensitive budgets’ are not separate budgets for women, or for men. They are attempts to break down, or disaggregate, the government’s mainstream budget according to its impact on women and men, and different groups of women and men, with cognizance being given to the society’s underpinning gender relations.” (Sharp, Rhonda: 1999)
“Gender budget initiatives analyze how governments raise and spend public money, with the aim of securing gender equality in decision-making about public resource allocation; and gender equality in the distribution of the impact of government budgets, both in their benefits and in their burdens.
Gender Budgeting is defined as the application of gender mainstreaming in the
budgetary process. It encompasses incorporating a gender perspective at all levels and
stages of the budgetary process and paves the way for translating gender commitments to
budgetary commitments and carrying out an assessment of the budget to establish its
gender differential impact.
In other words Gender Budgeting looks at Government budget from a gender perspective to assess how it addresses the needs of women not only in traditional areas like health, education etc but also in so called ‘gender neutral’ sectors like Transport , Power, Telecommunications, Defence etc. It does not seek to create a separate budget but seeks to put in place affirmative action for meeting women’s specific needs, thus bringing into effect gender responsive budgeting.
The impact of government budgets on the most disadvantaged groups of women is a focus of special attention.” (IDRC, 2001)
The above definitions underline the fact that gender budgeting is now seen as a socio-economic tool for ensuring gender equity in the development process and lays a strong emphasis on engendering public expenditure and policy. Critical activities constituting the gender budgeting exercise would include a) Addressing gap between policy commitment and allocation for women through
- Adequate resource allocation and gender sensitive programme formulation and implementation
- Mainstreaming gender concerns in public expenditure and policy
- Gender audit of public expenditure, programme implementation and policies – relating to public expenditure, fiscal & monetary matters etc.
- Adequate resource allocation and gender sensitive programme formulation and implementation:
In India the strategic framework for gender sensitivity in resource allocation has been earmarking a specified minimum quantum of funds/benefits for women in all women related sectors, supplemented by targeted interventions for women in various sectors like health, education, employment, training, micro-credit etc.
Objective of gender budgeting:
The ultimate objective of gender budgeting is to transform and transcend
traditional perceptions and mind sets towards women and awaken a gender sensitive
consciousness which will not only enable women to come into the mainstream but also
give them their due recognition as equal citizens of the country.
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Participants