Gender Budgeting means looking at the Government budget from a gender perspective to assess how it addresses the needs of women in all sectors. It does not seek to create a separate budget but to provide affirmative action to address the specific needs of women and translate gender commitments into budgetary commitments.

Gender Budgeting lends itself to strengthening administrative processes and actions to achieve the targets for improvement in the position of women. It not only entails a look at allocation of resources for women but goes beyond to cover tracking the utilization of allocated resources, impact analysis and beneficiary incidence analysis of public expenditure and policy from a gender perspective. Hence gender budgeting is not an accounting exercise as commonly perceived and understood. It encompasses incorporating a gender perspective and sensitiveness at all levels and stages of the developmental planning, programs, schemes, processes and implementation.

In the Indian context, the commitment to gender equity is well entrenched at the highest policy making level - the Constitution of India. Apart from this, the National Policy for Empowerment of Women 2001 envisaged introduction of a gender perspective in the budgeting process as an operational strategy. These provisions are effected and supplemented by legal framework by way of women specific legislations like Immoral Traffic (Prevention) Act, 1956, the Maternity Benefit Act, 1961, the Dowry Prohibition Act, 1961, Equal Remuneration Act, 1976, relevant provisions of Code of Criminal Procedure, 1973, Special provisions under IPC, the PCPNDT Act, 1994 and the most recent Domestic Violence Act, 2005.

In addition, the plan documents have over the years reflected the evolving trends in gender matters. Formal earmarking of funds for women began with the Women’s Component Plan. However, gender sensitivity in allocation of resources actually started with the Seventh Plan. The Eighth Plan highlighted for the first time a gender perspective and the need to ensure a definite flow of funds from the general developmental sectors to women. The Ninth Plan adopted the ‘Women’s Component Plan’ as one of the major strategies and directed both the Central and State Governments to ensure “not less than 30 percent of the funds/benefits earmarked in all the women’s related sectors. The Tenth Plan reinforced commitment to gender budgeting to establish its gender-differential impact and to translate gender commitments into budgetary commitments. Till date Gender Budget Cells have been formed in 50 Ministries and Departments.

WPC is regularly in touch with Finance Ministry and is lobbying for engendering of Eleventh Plan. A committee had been working on analyzing the 10th five Year Plan and the National Budgets; from time to time a set of recommendations are prepared and submitted to the Chief Ministers and Chief Secretaries of all the states to make the budgets more gender responsive. During the National Conventions and Regional workshop, WPC has been able to strategize its plan for lobbying Ministry and state governments for effective implementation of important centrally sponsored schemes entrusted to the states and on engendering the state budgets. During such forums the participants are trained and familiarized with the tools to lobby governments holding them accountable in fulfilling their commitments to gender equality.

WPC had been invited by the Government of Madhya Pradesh (GoMP) to train their senior officials in analyzing the budgetary allocations and preparing a gender responsive budget; effect to which our team got involved in preparing the budget for financial year 2007-08. It is a matter of great pride for WPC as the GoMP incorporated all suggestions and recommendations submitted by our team, including the allocation of money for implementation of DV Act and introducing new schemes in various departments for women in the state. WPC’s contribution was appreciated by the state officials and this initiative has got huge media coverage after the Chief Minister and Revenue Minister made it part of their budget speeches. WPC team is soon leaving for Madhya Pradesh to start the second phase of
training.

           
                                 Training of the Government Officials of Madhya Pradesh

WPC was also invited by the Government of Haryana to train their senior officials on Gender Budgeting on January16, 2007 at Chandigarh.The Chief Secretary, Director General, HIPA, Planning Secretary and Secretaries from 12 other departments, attended the programme. It was for the first time that a workshop on gender budgeting was organized and attended by senior officials in Haryana. The encouraging outcome of the exercise was that the Chief Secretary promised to take the lead in setting up the gender cell with the Finance Department and engage WPC in taking the issue forward.

WPC has been enlisted in the Committee, which is responsible for the formation of Gender Budget cell in Ministry of Housing and Poverty Alleviation.

In order to further steer WPC’s agenda on Gender-Responsive Budgeting following actions have been taken: -

Regional Workshops

A Southern Regional Workshop covering the states of Karnataka, Tamil Nadu, Kerala and Andhra Pradesh was organized on 6th and 7th Octiber’2006 in Bangalore.

                            

The Chief Guest on the occasion was Mr.Katta Subramanium , Industry Minister of Karnataka. He announced the establishment of a Gender Budget cell in Karnataka to monitor the expenditure of funds being allocated by the state government for women.

• A North-East Regional Workshop covering the states of Assam, Arunachal Pradesh, Meghalaya, Manipur, Nagaland, Sikkim, and Tripura on 19th and 20th January 2007 in Guwahati.

The workshop at Guwahati was the second regional workshop on the issue and it was focused on inviting the attention of state governments to incorporating gender budgeting in their agenda to facilitate better utilization of budgetary allocation with equitable sharing of resources.

Letters are sent regularly to the Chief Secretaries in all states seeking support for designing and implementing a Gender Sensitive Budget in the ensuing financial year. WPC urges them to look into the specific recommendations of Government of India Report 2004. This expert group report constituted to review the classification system for government transactions that had given certain recommendations for incorporating and developing a matrix for gender budgeting and disseminating information to the concerned Ministries and Department.