1. Women’s Empowerment Through Gender Budgeting - The Indian Context
Presentation by
Anjali Goyal
Director, Department of Women and Child Development,
Ministry of Human Resource Development
Government of India
November 2005

2. 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.”

3. 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

4. What are gender commitments in the Indian context ?
Constitutional Provisions
Legal Framework
Women Specific Laws
Laws affecting Women
Policies
Public Expenditure Programmes

5. Women and Legal Framework
Women 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

6. Women related legislations
41 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.

7. 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

8. 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
The Government adopted the National Policy for the empowerment of women on 20 March The policy prescribes action under various themes and issues and stresses on importance of ear-marking allocations under the women’s component plan and priortise is need for gender budteting.

9. Institutional Empowering Mechanisms
Parliamentary Committee on Empowerment of Women
National Commission for Women
A Parliament Committee on Empowerment of Women consisting of 30 Members, 20 to be nominated by the Speaker from amongst Members of Lok Sabha and 10 to be nominated by the Chairman, Rajya Sabha from amongst members of Rajya Sabha was constituted in 1997 for considering the reports of the National Commission for Women to examine the measure taken by the Government to secure women’s equality and to report on the working of welfare programmes for women, etc.

10. The Challenge
How do we translate all these commitments into budgetary commitments and administrative action ?
How do we engender policies and programmes ?

11. Evolution of Indian Initiatives

12. 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

13. Eighth Plan
The Eighth Plan ( ) 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”

14. 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
The Planning Commission sent instructions to Ministries and States/UT s to draw up a Women’s Component Plan to
Identify programmes on women
Earmark funds as part of 9th plan /annual plan proposals
The operational strategies outlined in the National Policy for Empowerment of Women 2001 also envisage introduction of a gender perspective in the budgeting process.
National Policy for Empowerment of Women 2001 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
A Parliament Committee on Empowerment of Women consisting of 30 Members, 20 to be nominated by the Speaker from amongst Members of Lok Sabha and 10 to be nominated by the Chairman, Rajya Sabha from amongst members of Rajya Sabha was constituted in 1997 for considering the reports of the National Commission for Women to examine the measure taken by the Government to secure women’s equality and to report on the working of welfare programmes for women, etc.

15. 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.

16. 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
Anjali Goyal 2005 ©opyright

17. 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
Consultations with select Departments on four priority areas
Food and Nutrition Security & Employment guarantee
Water and Sanitation
Adequate Health facilities
Asset base for women
Without such a gender sensitive analysis public investment and public expenditure may unwittingly re-inforce gender inequity.

18. 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

19. Instructions issued by Inter-Departmental Committee, GOI
All Departments to open Gender Budget Cells by
All Departments to reflect benefit-incidence analysis of expenditure in Annual Reports
Eighteen Departments to reflect gender component of schemes in Performance Budgets of

20. New Statement on Gender Budgeting
Union Budget
New Statement on Gender Budgeting
Nine Departments Identified for focus

21. 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
Anjali Goyal 2005 ©opyright

22. Rationale of Alternative Strategy
Empowerment has to be
Holistic (Political, Social and Economic)
Universal (equal opportunity and level playing field)
Participative and Inclusive
Anjali Goyal 2005 ©opyright

23. 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
a)Refining and standardizing methodology and development of tools. Trend Analysis
shift in priorities in allocation across clusters of services etc, Variations in allocation of resources and actual expenditure.  Adherence to physical targets
b) Research and micro studies to guide macro policies like credit policy, taxes etc
Identification of gender impact of policies/interventions viewed as gender neutral
Micro studies to identify need for affirmative action in favour of women towards restoring gender imbalances
c) Micro studies on incidence of benefits
Analysis of cost of delivery of services
Investment in agri- but women don’t own land- get remuneration as casual labour- lowest paid. Instead more invt in dairy

24. 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
a) Developing MIS for feed back from implementing agencies
Inclusion of new parameters in data collection in Census and surveys by NSO, CSO etc
b)Collation of research and exchange of best practices,Developing Tools for dissemination
Forums and Partnerships amongst experts and stakeholder.

25. Holistic approach to Empowerment
Water & San.
Health
& Nut.
Political
Participation
Education
Asset base
Skills
Marketing
Holistic approach to women’s empowerment:
Social (education, health, status in family etc)
Economic (asset ownership, share in income, skills, appropriate technology etc)
Political (participation in decision making)
Technology
Credit

26. 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

27. 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

28. Gender Analysis of State Budgets
Research Study – Decadal trend

29. 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

30. 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

31. 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 )

32. Thank you