Gender Budgeting

Women’s Empowerment Through Gender Budgeting

- The Indian Context

Presentation by

Akash Saxena

Gender Budgeting- a definition

• “Gender budget initiatives analyse 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. The impact of government budgets on the most disadvantaged groups of women is a focus of special attention.”

What is Gender Budgeting ?• An exercise to translate stated gender commitments of

the Government into budgetary commitments.– Strategy for ensuring Gender Sensitive Resource

Allocation and a tool for engendering macro economic policy

• Entails affirmative action for empowering women• Covers assessment of gender differential impact of

Government Budgets and policies (Revenue and Expenditure).– Enables Tracking and Allocating resources for women

empowerment– Opportunity to determine real value of resources

allocated to women

What are gender commitments in the Indian context ?

• Constitutional Provisions

• Legal Framework

– Women Specific Laws

– Laws affecting Women

• Policies

• Public Expenditure Programmes

Women and Legal FrameworkWomen specific Legislations• Immoral Traffic (Prevention) Act, 1956• The Maternity Benefit Act 1961• The Dowry Prohibition Act, 1961• Indecent Representation of Women (Prohibition)

Act, 1986• The Commission of Sati (Prevention)Act, 1987• Protection of Women from Domestic Violence

Act, 2005

Women related legislations41 laws covering various spheres.• Economic

Factories Act 1948, Minimum Wages Act 1948,

Equal Remuneration Act 1976, The Employees’ State Insurance Act, 1948, The Plantation Labour Act, 1951, The Bonded Labour System (Abolition) Act 1976

• Protection

Relevant provisions of Code of Criminal Procedure, 1973; Special provisions under IPC, The Legal Practitioners (Women) Act, 1923, The Pre-Natal Diagnostic Technique (Regulation and Prevention of Misuse ) Act, 1994.

Women related legislations

Social

Family Courts Act, 1984, The Indian Succession Act, 1925, The Medical Termination of Pregnancy Act 1971, The Child Marriage Restraint Act, 1929, The Hindu Marriage Act, 1955, The Hindu Succession Act, 1956 (& amended in 2005), The Indian Divorce Act, 1969

National Policy for Empowerment of Women

• Objective – advancement, development and empowerment, elimination of discrimination

• Themes and issues – Judicial legal system, economic empowerment, social empowerment (health, education, science and technology, drinking water and sanitation, protection from violence) women and decision making, girl child

Institutional Empowering Mechanisms

• Parliamentary Committee on Empowerment of Women

• National Commission for Women

The Challenge

• How do we translate all these commitments into budgetary commitments and administrative action ?

• How do we engender policies and programmes ?

Evolution of Indian Initiatives

Seventh Plan

• 1985- Ministry of Human Resource Development set up

• Department for Women and Child Development constituted in HRD Ministry

• 27 major women specific schemes identified for monitoring to assess quantum of funds/benefits flowing to women

Eighth Plan

• The Eighth Plan (1992-97) for the first time highlighted the need to ensure a definite flow of funds from general developmental sectors to women

• It commented:

“ … special programmes on women should complement the general development programmes. The latter in turn should reflect greater gender sensitivity”

Ninth Plan• Women’s Component Plan- 30% of funds

were sought to be ear-marked in all women related sectors – inter-sectoral review and multi-sector approach

• Special vigil to be kept on the flow of the earmarked funds/benefits

• Quantifies performance under Women’s Component Plan in Ninth Plan-Approach Paper Tenth Plan indicates 42.9% of gross budgetary support in 15 women related Ministries/Departments has gone to women

Tenth Plan Reinforces commitment to gender budgeting to

establish its gender-differential impact and to translate gender commitments into budgetary commitments.

• Aims at initiating immediate action in tying up the two effective concepts of Women Component Plan (WCP) and Gender Budgeting to play a complementary role to each other, and thus ensure both preventive and post-facto action in enabling women to receive their rightful share from all the women-related general development sectors.

Indian Experience• Women’s Component Plan-Earmarking

resources for women• Implementing Women Specific Schemes • Monitoring macro indicators like MMR

Literacy rates, work participation• Quantum and Trend analysis of resources

allocated and spent on women• Gender Audit of schemes and programmes-

implementation and impact analysis

Action by the Department for Women & Child Development

• Issue of checklists / guidelines for gender audit of public expenditure

• Adoption of Strategic Framework for Gender Budgeting

• Special letters sent to Ministry of Finance and Planning Commission to engender the Annual Plan and Budget exercise for 2005-2006

• Consultations with select Departments on four priority areas– Food and Nutrition Security & Employment guarantee– Water and Sanitation– Adequate Health facilities– Asset base for women

Action by the Department for Women & Child Development

• Capacity Building- Departments in GOI and State Governments

• Mainstreaming Gender Concerns- Watchdog approach– Interest Subsidy– Kerosene Oil– Micro Credit– Health Insurance– Inflation

Instructions issued by Inter-Departmental Committee, GOI• All Departments to open Gender

Budget Cells by 1.1. 2005

• All Departments to reflect benefit-incidence analysis of expenditure in Annual Reports-2005-06

• Eighteen Departments to reflect gender component of schemes in Performance Budgets of 2005-06

Union Budget 2005-06

• New Statement on Gender Budgeting

• Nine Departments Identified for focus

Gender Mainstreaming- our new Mantra for “Women’s Development”

• Women as a beneficiary segment – Need for Gender mainstreaming– Fiscal and Monetary Policies, Legislations

• Need to Change Programme formulations and implementation processes– More gender friendly – Optimize Participation of Voluntary Sector

• Gender budgeting – not an end in itself

Rationale of Alternative Strategy

• Empowerment has to be

– Holistic (Political, Social and Economic)

– Universal (equal opportunity and level playing field)

– Participative and Inclusive

Framework of Gender Budgeting

• Quantification of allocation of resources for women

• Gender Audit of policies of the Government

• Impact assessment of various schemes in the Union and State budgets

• Analyzing schematic and policy initiatives and link with impact on status of women related Macro Indicators

Framework of Gender Budgeting

• Institutionalizing the generation and collection of gender dis-aggregated data

• Consultations and Capacity building• Promote gender equity in

participation in decision making

Holistic approach to Empowerment

Health& Nut.

Education

Water & San.

Skills

Technology Credit

PoliticalParticipation

Marketing

Asset base

Action Areas

• Women availing services of public utilities like road transport, power, water and sanitation, telecommunication etc.

• Training of women as highly skilled workers- top end skills

• Research/Technology for women

• Women in the work force

• Asset ownership by women

• Women as Entrepreneurs

• Implementation of Laws like– Equal remuneration– Minimum Wages – Factories Act

• Infrastructure for women like– Water and sanitation at workplace– Creches– Working Women Hostels– Transport services– Security

Gender Analysis of State Budgets• Research Study – Decadal trend

Expenditure on Women's Development (Rs in cr.)

YEAR CENTRE STATES TOTALAMOUNT % AMOUNT % AMOUNT

1993-94 440.32 41 643.25 59 1083.57

1994-95 643.48 48 700.17 52 1343.65

1995-96 558.22 37 960.88 63 1519.09

1996-97 811.40 44 1050.35 56 1861.75

1997-98 893.60 43 1169.21 57 2062.81

1998-99 1178.17 47 1348.47 53 2526.64

1999-00 1382.04 50 1398.29 50 2780.33

2000-01 1550.80 48 1709.84 52 3260.63

2001-02 (RE) 1838.64 48 2031.73 52 3870.37

2002-03 (BE) 1507.59 41 2211.57 59 3719.16

Preliminary Findings

• Higher percentage share of states in expenditure on women

• Expenditure on Health is largest component

• Broad trend reflects increase in expenditure• Wide annual fluctuations in many states• Some states reflect relatively less

expenditure compared with population of women

Path Ahead• Pursue Gender Mainstreaming in the

Government through coordination with Gender Budget cells

• Widening scope of National Statistical System

• Widening scope from public expenditure to Revenues, Fiscal and Monetary Policies

• Pursue gender budgeting by States with help of planning Commission and MOF

• Capacity Building- Coordinate with training institutes and experts to standardize methodology and tools

To Conclude• “It is more important to create a general

awareness’ and understanding of the problems of women’s employment in all the top policy and decision making and executive personnel. There is also the special problem facing women like the preference for male children for social and cultural reasons. This will require awareness, understanding and action. The best way to do so is to educate the children, orient the teachers, examine the text books and teaching-aids and ensure that the next generation grows up with new thinking.”

(6th Five Year Plan )

Thank you