Gender Budgeting : An Overview

Dr. Paramita MajumdarSenior Consultant, Gender Budgeting

Ministry of Women and Child Development, Govt. of India28 July 2015, VVGNLI, Noida

Training Programme on Effective Enforcement of Laws pertaining to Women Employees for Labour Enforcement

Officers from Central and State Governments/UTs

What is Gender Budgeting (GB)?

Is a process to translate stated gender commitments of the Government into budgetary commitments

Involves analysis of actual Government expenditure and revenue on women and girls as compared to on men and boys

Construction of general budgets from a gender perspective Provide for affirmative action to address the specific needs of

women

Female Workforce Participation 1971-2011

Source Census of India

Source: Women Workers in India: Why So Few Among So Many? Sonali Das, Sonali Jain-Chandra, Kalpana Kochhar, and Naresh Kumarhttps://www.imf.org/external/pubs/ft/wp/2015/wp1555.pdf

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• Mostly deals with the organised sector. Extent of protection and benefits for workers rise with size of firm or factory.

• No national minimum wage; No economy-wide social security.

• Labour being a concurrent subject in the constitution, states are empowered to enact separate legislations.

• The legislations tend to be aspirational, with limited enforcement.

• Best illustrated by the job-security law: firms employing 100 or more workers are mandated to seek the state’s permission to retrench or lay off a worker.

Labour Legislations

What are the common forms of discrimination?

What are the common forms of discrimination?

Using Five Step Framework

1. Analysis of the situation of women, men, girls and boys in a given sector.

2. Assessment of the extent to which policies address the gendered situation.

3. Assessment as to whether budget allocations are adequate, in order to implement gender-responsive policies.

4. Assessment of short-term outputs of expenditure, in order to evaluate how resources are actually spent, and policies and programmes implemented.

5. Assessment of the long-term outcomes or impact expenditures might have.

Instutionalizing Gender Budgeting

• Government of India adopted Gender Budgeting as a tool for mainstreaming gender across sectors in 2005-06.

• Setting up of Gender Budgeting Cells across all Ministries and Departments and outlining the composition and functions of Gender Budgeting Cells in the form of a Gender Budgeting Charter issued by the Ministry of Finance. Gender Budgeting Cells envisaged as focal points set up in 57 Ministries/ Department

• Reporting in the Gender Budget Statement as part of the annual budget by Ministries and Departments

• Formulation of a Gender Budgeting scheme to support training and research, evaluation, impact assessment, gender audit. Intensive capacity building programmes across sectors

• Development of GB Handbook and Manual and wide dissemination – Strengthening apex training institutes at the national and sub-national level to train civil servants and resource persons

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Institutionalizing Gender Budgeting

• Engaging with Line Departments: One-to-one interactions with Ministries/ Departments

• Integration of gender perspective at the design stage itself of all programs and schemes of Government of India through Expenditure Finance Committee Memorandum, Ministry of Finance.

• Gender based outputs and outcomes as an integral part of the Outcome Budget Document prepared by each Ministry. Guidelines for the Outcome Budget Document engendered and issued by the Ministry of Finance.

• GB Guidelines prepared by the Ministry of Women and Child Development and issued to all states (sub-national governments) to comply with the approach. Regular training programs organized.

• Post Budget Analysis and Gender Audit of the GB Statement by Civil Society Organisations

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Labour Enforcement Officers• The Central Government has appointed Labour Enforcement

Officers as Inspectors for the purpose of making investigation by causing production of relevant registers/records as to whether the provisions of the Equal Remuneration Act, 1976 are being complied with by the employers, who are required to maintain the roll of employee in Form-D.  

• Assistant Labour Commissioners have been appointed as authorities for the purpose of hearing and deciding complaints with regard to the contravention of any provision of the Act, claims arising out of nonpayment of wages at equal rate to men and women workers. 

• The Regional Labour Commissioners have been appointed as appellate authorities to hear complaints in respect of cases decided by the ALCs.

Key Challenges

• Multi-lingual and Multi-cultural country• Social division of gender roles and cultural practice

curb female potential• Dearth of Women in Politics• Implementation of Legislations & Policies • Issues of Gender and Gender Sensitization

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Thank You !!