Gender Budgeting

Gender Budgeting

News: The share of Gender Budget in the total Union Budget increased to 6.5% in 2024-25 from 5% in 2023-24.

What is Gender Budgeting?
• Gender Budgeting refers to the practice of creating or assessing budgets from a gender perspective. It’s sometimes known as gender-sensitive budgeting.
• The aim is not to divide budgets for women, but to address budgetary gender inequality issues, including gender hierarchies and the discrepancies between women’s and men’s salaries.

Gender Budgeting in India:
• In India, Gender Budget Statement (GBS) was first introduced in the Indian Budget in 2005-06. This GB Statement comprises two parts– Part A reflects Women Specific Schemes, i.e. those which have 100% allocation for women. Part B reflects Pro Women Schemes, i.e. those where at least 30% of the allocation is for women.
• Gender Budgeting is a powerful tool for achieving gender mainstreaming so as to ensure that benefits of development reach women as much as men.

Need for Gender Budgeting
• Addressing Gender Inequality: The Gender Gap Report 2023 ranked India at 127 out of 146 countries. Gender budgeting provides a systematic framework for addressing these inequalities by allocating resources towards programs and initiatives that promote gender equality.
• Ensuring Targeted Interventions: Gender budgeting helps in identifying and prioritizing the specific needs and priorities of women and girls.
• Enhancing Development Outcomes: Gender equality helps achieve several benefits, including poverty reduction, improved health outcomes, and enhanced economic growth.
• International Commitments: India is a signatory to various international agreements and conventions that mandate the promotion of gender equality and women’s rights, including the Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs) and the Convention on the Elimination of All Forms of Discrimination Against Women (CEDAW). Gender budgeting is necessary to fulfill these commitments.

What are some challenges in implementing Gender Budgeting?
• Expertise in Gender Analysis: There may be a lack of expertise in gender analysis and data, which is crucial for effective gender budgeting.
• Limited Evidence of Effectiveness: There is limited systematic evidence that gender budgeting works, which can make it difficult to measure its impact and effectiveness.
• Data Availability: The availability of gender-disaggregated data can be a challenge. Such data is crucial for analyzing the gender-differentiated impact of fiscal policies.
• Coordination Issues: Effective gender budgeting requires coordination across different departments and levels of government, which can be challenging.
• Regular monitoring: Absence of robust monitoring mechanisms to evaluate the accountability and progress of gender budgeting initiatives reduces its effectiveness.

Other types of Budgeting practices:
• Zero-Based Budgeting: In this method, every function within an organization is analyzed for its needs and costs. Budgets are then built around what is needed for the upcoming period, regardless of whether each budget is higher or lower than the previous one.
• Incremental Budgeting: This method takes last year’s actual figures and adds or subtracts a percentage to obtain the current year’s budget.
• Value Proposition Budgeting: This method ensures that everything included in the budget delivers value for the business.
• Sunset Budgeting
• Performance Based Budgeting