Is Gender Budgeting Mere Lip Service?

TYPICALLY, INDIA CELEBRATES women’s empowerment in set ways. Bluntly said, the annual tokenism to International Women’s Day, fostering assigned quotas in colleges, campus placements, Panchayat seats, etc. make up for much of these celebrations.

- Dakshita Das & Srinath Sridharan

As an irritant, most of the seminars and discussions on the topic of women’s empowerment would be largely manels (male dominated panels). Periodic discussions are also held on various laws that have been reformed to give equal space to women and how more such initiatives are pending. Most voices are however, somewhat pedantic, speaking of the age-old so-called ways to clear gender gaps like “Boost her selfesteem...”, “Shut down the negativity…” “Support Women-Run Businesses...,” “Give her proper education...,” “Be Open and Honest...” etc. etc.

Equal voting rights assigned in our Constitution has made the political class woo the women vote bank through fiscal and other initiatives such as prohibition. The holistic approach i.e. to foster women as individuals making choices and being aware of themselves with a totally gender neutral approach has yet to find traction in their case for total mainstreaming or, rather, it is seeing early days in India.

It is all the more important that Gender responsive budgeting now play a critical role, as it focuses on inclusive programmes and policies developed to give space to women. The gender budget of the Union government is an exercise that applies a genderedlens to the allocation and tracking of public funds. The focus is on improving women’s welfare through government policies.