Interventions of women’s organisations and scholars in Women’s Studies in India have ensured the introduction of the concept of gender budgeting in our country. There are around 40 countries around the world who have followed the 1984 Australian Government initiative to look at Government expenditures and revenue collections from a gender point of view, that is to assess the differential impact of such policies on women and girls as compared to men and boys. The most comprehensive experience is from South Africa that started a gender audit of all Ministries in 1995.

The concept was taken up by the World Bank which along with the IMF have in several of their documents over the last decade included “gender mainstreaming” and “gender responsive budgets” (GRBs) as practices essential for “good governance.” According to their understanding this would require disaggregation of gender based data and steps to redress gaps so revealed. While gender based data is certainly an important aspect of gender budgeting since in the labyrinth of Government statistics it is difficult to actually trace what happened to money meant for “women’s empowerment” the Bank-Fund understanding is not only inadequate but deeply flawed. Its assumption is that mainstream economic policies are to be taken as a given, written in stone, and that women’s needs are to be “mainstreamed” into that framework. Expressing the experience of many third world countries, Mary Rusumbi, the Director of the Tanzananian Institute which works on gender budgeting in that country commented “The support that the Government is getting from global institutions like the World bank is very constraining. A lot of instructions come from them which are kind of anti-progressive for men and women. One such programme forced the Government to withdraw subsidies for small farmers, the great majority of whom are poor women. These policies are not analysed with a gender perspective.” Thus, even though the Bank-Fund may be pushing policies that are injurious to the interests of women at the macro-level, they could still lay claim to “gender sensitivity” if their understanding of gender sensitive budgeting is accepted.

In India the impact of neo-liberal policies on women has been devastating in crucial areas such as employment, food security, heath and education. The impact is seen not so much in terms of the gap between women and me though that too has certainly grown, but between social groups. Indeed the inequalities between the rich and the poor in India are obscene. The acute agrarian crisis symbolised by the stark fact that since 2002 on an average every 30 minutes a farmer in India has committed suicide. Many of them have been women. Obviously there is a deep impact on rural women and children. If gender sensitive budgets are to be put in place a reversal of the current framework of policies is required. Instead of retreating from its responsibilities Government must ensure farmer centric policies in the agricultural sector including acceptance of Swaminathan commission recommendations for women farmers and women in the rural sector. In crucial social sector projects Government requires to take responsibility to provide the minimum requirements for human development which includes subsidies and public expenditure for housing, food, education, health and employment instead of leaving it to “private-public participation.” Without such a change of policies, “gender mainstreaming” as proposed by the Bank-Fund formula would be entirely counter-productive since women’s marginalisation today is precisely the result of such mainstream “development.” Thus while demanding gender budgeting and gender sensitive budgets, women’s organisations in India must link it with struggles to change macro policies. For us gender sensitive budgets would have to take into account not only the differences and gaps caused by policies between men and women, but between social classes, the rich and the poor, as also the impact of caste and community on women’s status. Depoliticalisation of budget critiques or demands in the name of gender budgeting would be harmful for women’s advance. There are three separate components that need to be viewed in a comprehensive exercise of gender budgeting.




Firstly, as mentioned above a study of the impact of macro-policies on women and alternative policies.

Secondly, such an exercise would have to examine the different schemes and projects meant for women and whether they actually help women. For example if there is an increased expenditure on family planning including on contraceptives hazardous to women, although the expenditure on women would show an increase, it would certainly not be of any benefit to women. Take another example. If in a budget there is an added expenditure on schemes to teach traditional skills such as cooking or sewing to women, but there is a cut in the welfare fund of bidi workers a large number of whom are women, the gender budget may show an increase but it would hardly help women. During the NDA period, an analysis of budgeting from a gender perspective showed the domination of stereotypical schemes for women with cuts in schemes for working women.

Thirdly it would have to examine gender disaggregated data quite minutely. There are two lots of expenditures in this connection. A decade ago the then Planning Commission had mandated that at least that one third of expenditure on social sector schemes and employment generating projects should be earmarked for women. The second lot are women specific schemes such as working women’s hostels or loans meant only for women etc. For the first time the Union Budget 2005-2006 included a statement on gender budgeting which presented the allocations for both lots of expenditures. In 2005-2006 ten departments of the Government had prepared such statements. The allocations taken together amounted to 2.8 per cent of the total Government expenditure in the budget estimates. In 2006-2007 the gender budgeting expanded to include 18 Ministries and departments and showed a rise to 5.1 per cent of the total Union Budget in the budget estimates for 2006-2007 Subsequently, more Ministries have reportedly joined the exercise and therefore it is expected that the percentage may go up. However that may not be reflective of any big increase in actual allocations except that more Ministries are being added.

A careful scrutiny made of the accounting under gender budgeting shows up the patriarchal mindset that is dominant leading to flaws in accounting and inflation of actual amounts spent for women. For example In the WCD budget the entire ICDS expenditure in 2006-2007 was included in the accounting for gender budget. The ICDS as is well known is primarily for children—both boys and girls. The inclusion of supplementary nutrition needs of lactating or pregnant mothers is a smaller part of the programme. By including the entire amount in gender budgeting you deny the existence of children and their needs as an independent group. Further, it is assumed that children are only women’s concern so the expenditure on children benefits women! Men of course have no responsibilities and therefore even if there happen to be more boys than girl children in the ICDS it is still a gender-based expenditure! Another example is the expenditures on contraception. Costs of condoms or social marketing of contraceptives is supposedly only a woman’s concern since it is included in the gender budget! The understanding of women specific schemes is equally and similiarly flawed. To inflate gender accounts all kinds of schemes that are meant for men and women have been added such as for example 96 per cent of the entire budget for Social Justice and Empowerment is put in the gender budget account as women specific, presumably because the Ministry has the word “empowerment” in its nomenclature!





It would appear that a mechanical exercise has been done to include at least thirty per cent of all expenditures of a Ministry in the gender budget whether it is so or not. Thus although the exercise for gender audits of budgets is a welcome step forward we are far from having an accurate picture of how sensitive a central Government is to women’s needs reflected in allocations of funds.