International Journal of Social Science : Vol. 3. No. 4, 495-509, Dec 2014

DOI No. 10.5958/2321-5771.2014.00024.6

Gender responsive budgeting in India:

Trends and Analysis

Joyashri Dey and Subhabrata Dutta

Dept. of Social work Assam University, Silchar, Assam, India.

Corresponding author: sduttasw@gmail.com

ABSTRACT

Gender based violence is quite common in almost all the developing countries.

Religion, customs, age-old prejudices, etc. have put Indian women in a subservient

and exploitable position in many domains of life. Low rates of participation in

education, lack of economic independence, value biases operating against them,

etc., have resulted in the women being dependent on men folk and other institutions

of authority like the family, neighbourhood and the society.

The Budget is an important tool in the hands of state for affirmative action for

improvementofgenderrelationsthroughreductionofgendergapinthedevelopment

process. It can help to reduce economic inequalities, between men and women as

well as between the rich and the poor. Budget impacts women’s lives in several

ways. It directly promotes women’s development through allocation of budgetary

funds for women’s programmes and reduces opportunities for empowerment of

women through budgetary cuts. Gender budget doesn’t mean a separate budget

for women rather gender budget is an attempt to assess government priorities as

they are reflected through the budget and examine how they impact women and

men and within that, certain groups of women and men. Gender Budget doesn’t

look at whether or not the same is spent on men and women but rather at what the

impact of the spending is on men and women and whether or not budgets respond

to the needs of both women and men adequately. Thus, Government of India has

undertaken Gender budgeting initiatives contribute to ‘gender mainstreaming’ by

focusing on the gender dimensions of government budgets.

Through Preliminary survey of studies it has been found that there is enough scope

and opportunity to present a critical analysis of the trends and characteristics of

gender budgeting by Government of India with some empirical evidences. Hence

the papers further aims to evaluate the composition of the total outlay for women

in the State Budget in terms of the priorities across different sectors relating to

different needs of women; and to suggest recommendations for budgetary policies

that can be adopted by the State for addressing the different needs of women.

For the purpose of the study at hand the researcher has relied on secondary data

sources with this background; the paper also underlines the implications for future

research and practice.

Keywords: Gender Based Violence, Women Empowerment, Gender Budget and

Government Programmes.