[Answered] What is gender budgeting? How it can help in women empowerment in India?

Gender budgeting means preparing budgets from a gender perspective. It aims at dealing with budgetary gender inequality issues, including gender hierarchies and the gender pay gap. Gender budgeting allows governments to promote equality through fiscal policies by setting goals or targets for equality and allocating funds to support those goals.

Gender budgeting involves:

1. Gender sensitive formulation of legislation, programmes and schemes.
2. Gender based allocation of resources.
3. Monitoring of expenditure and public service delivery from a gender perspective.
4. Audit and impact assessment of programmes and schemes on women.
5. Follow-up corrective action to address gender disparities.

How gender budgeting can ensure women empowerment in India?

1. It act as a powerful tool for achieving gender mainstreaming so as to ensure that benefits of development reach women as much as men.
2. It recognise the need of an affirmative action to address specific needs of women.
3. It sensitise government and society towards discrimination and gaps among women and men in a given sector.
4. Gender responsive budgets policies can contribute to achieve the objectives of gender equality, human development and economic efficiency.
5. Gender budgeting at department/ministry lead to more focus on issues of women’s inequality and empowerment and thereby led to more specific allocation on such schemes.
6. It put pressure and focus on gender sensitive programme formulation and implementation. Therefore, it mainstream gender concerns in public expenditure and policy.
7. It lead to women empowerment by increasing and improving the social, economic, and political situation of the women, and ensure equal rights to women. It helps women to control and benefit from resources, assets and income, as well as the enable them to manage risks and take decisions good for them.
8. It ensure that benefits of development reach each women as much as it benefit men. E.g. Schemes like Sukanya Samridhi Yojana enhance economic status of girls.
9. It lead to increased focus on education, health, and safety of women. E.g. Beti bachao, beti padhao has resulted in increased child sex ratio in vulnerable areas.
10. It ensure women’s health through policies and schemes. E.g Janani suraksha yojana, Maternity Benefit Act 2016 ensure good health of women.

Thus gender budgeting has various benefits especially for women. It empower women in true sense and help government to trickle down benefits of economic growth to women. It ensure rights and dignity of women leading to gender equality.