Transcript Women’s Empowerment Through Gender Budgeting

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
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.”
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
What are gender commitments in
the Indian context ?
• Constitutional Provisions
• Legal Framework
– Women Specific Laws
– Laws affecting Women
• Policies
• Public Expenditure Programmes
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
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.
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
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
Institutional Empowering
Mechanisms
Parliamentary Committee on
Empowerment of Women
• National Commission for
Women
•
The Challenge
• How do we translate all these
commitments into budgetary
commitments
and
administrative action ?
• How do we engender policies
and programmes ?
Evolution of Indian Initiatives
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
Eighth Plan
• The Eighth Plan (1992-97) 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”
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
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.
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 programmesimplementation and impact analysis
Anjali Goyal 2005 ©opyright
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 2005-2006
• Consultations with select Departments on four
priority areas
–
–
–
–
Food and Nutrition Security & Employment guarantee
Water and Sanitation
Adequate Health facilities
Asset base for women
Action by the Department for Women
& Child Development
• Capacity Building- Departments in GOI
and State Governments
• Mainstreaming
Gender
ConcernsWatchdog approach
–
–
–
–
–
Interest Subsidy
Kerosene Oil
Micro Credit
Health Insurance
Inflation
Instructions issued by InterDepartmental Committee, GOI
• All Departments to open Gender
Budget Cells by 1.1. 2005
• All Departments to reflect benefitincidence analysis of expenditure in
Annual Reports-2005-06
• Eighteen Departments to reflect
gender component of schemes in
Performance Budgets of 2005-06
Union Budget 2005-06
• New Statement on Gender
Budgeting
• Nine Departments Identified
for focus
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
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
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
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
Holistic approach to Empowerment
Health
& Nut.
Water & San.
Political
Participation
Education
Asset base
Skills
Marketing
Technology
Credit
Action Areas
• Women availing services of public utilities
like road transport, power, water and
sanitation, telecommunication etc.
• Training of women as highly skilled workerstop end skills
• Research/Technology for women
• Women in the work force
• Asset ownership by women
• Women as Entrepreneurs
• 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
Gender Analysis of State Budgets
• Research Study – Decadal trend
Expenditure on Women's Development
YEAR
1993-94
1994-95
1995-96
1996-97
1997-98
1998-99
1999-00
2000-01
2001-02 (RE)
2002-03 (BE)
CENTRE
AMOUNT
%
440.32
643.48
558.22
811.40
893.60
1178.17
1382.04
1550.80
1838.64
1507.59
(Rs in cr.)
STATES
AMOUNT
%
41
48
37
44
43
47
50
48
48
41
643.25
700.17
960.88
1050.35
1169.21
1348.47
1398.29
1709.84
2031.73
2211.57
TOTAL
AMOUNT
59
52
63
56
57
53
50
52
52
59
1083.57
1343.65
1519.09
1861.75
2062.81
2526.64
2780.33
3260.63
3870.37
3719.16
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
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
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 )
Thank you