Gender Budgeting: Gender and Sex

  • Influenced expenditure and revenue policies at national and state govt. levels.
  • Empower women and economy.
  • To ensure greater efficiency and gender equity in fiscal policy.
  • Re-orienting the allocation of public resources.
  • Advocating for an advanced decision making role for women in important issues.
  • Securing equity in the distribution of resources between men and women.
  • Fighting marginalization and exclusion from economic, political, and constitutional processes.
  • Gender Budgeting looks at every part of the government budget:
    • To assess how it will address the different needs of women and men, girls and boys.
    • Different groups of women and men, girls and boy.
    • For example, in the area of health, male and female people will have similar needs in respect to influenza and malaria. But women will have greater needs than men in terms of reproductive health.

Gender and Sex

  • Gender is the culturally and socially constructed roles, responsibilities, privileges, relations and expectations of women and men, boys and girls.
  • These are socially constructed, they can change over time and differ from one place to another.
  • In respect of gender, we need to have a vision of the type of roles, responsibilities, and relationship that we want to see in the country for women and men, girls and boys, and design, fund and implement policies a programmes to move towards this goal.
  • Sex is the biological make-up of male and female people.
  • It is what we are born with, and does not change over time, nor differs from place to place.
  • With respect to sex should be ensured that policies and programmes are available and adequately financed to address the different biological needs of women and men, including childbearing for women.

Gender Budgeting Purposes

  • Identifying the needs of women and reprioritizing expenditure to meet these needs.
  • Supporting gender mainstreaming in macroeconomics.
  • Strengthening civil society participation in economic policymaking.
  • Enhancing the linkages between economic and social policy outcomes.
  • Tracking public expenditure against gender and development policy commitments.
  • Contributing to the attainment of the Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs) .

GDP Contribution of Women

  • Global average percentage-37
  • India-17%
  • China-41%
  • Sub-Saharan Africa-39%

Unequal Participation of Women Across Sectors

Unequal Particpation of Women
IndicatorFemaleMale
Labour force participation rate (% 15 + years)2780
Representation in Lok Sabha (%)12.187.9
Representation in Rajya Sabha (%)12.687.4
Representation in Supreme Court (%)3.496.6
Representation in High Court (%)9.890.2

Scope for Gender Budgeting

Four Components (Women as Beneficiaries)

  • The budgetary allocation of resources to various heads.
  • The actual Government outlays on various heads.
  • An accounting of how resources are utilized for a particular purpose.
  • An evaluation of the effectiveness of the resources utilized in delivering the intended results.
  • At the budget preparation stage:
    • Ensure financial appropriations made in budgets enable the implementation of programmes, schemes and activities in a way that will match the needs.
    • Assess likely impact of new revenue-raising methods on different groups, compared with their ability to pay.
    • Compare Budget Estimates (BE) for the current year with Revised Estimates (RE) and Actual Expenditure (AE) of the previous year and ensure corrective steps are taken to ensure proper and full utilization of the budgets of current year.
  • When the budget is tabled:
    • Analyse sector-wise or ministry⟋department wise trends and shares of allocations and expenditure as an indicator of government՚s priorities.
    • Analyse the revenue side as in what are the sources of revenue, subsidies, etc. and how will they impact men and women.
  • At the budget implementation stage:
    • Is the budget being spent in the way it was intended and to the full extent? What are the delivery costs? Who is receiving subsidies? Is the budget being spent for the purpose and the people for which⟋whom it was intended?

Gender Budgeting in India

  • Influenced expenditure.
  • Revenue policies at national and state government levels.
  • To ensure greater efficiency and gender equity in fiscal policy.
  • Also as per the estimates a 1% increase in public health spending in Asia Pacific can reduce GII by 0.0045% points. Similar rise in female labour force participation can reduce GII by 0.0041 percentage points.
  • India is a leading example of Gender Budgeting in the Asia Pacific region, as acknowledged by the United Nations (UNDP Asia Pacific, 2010; UN Women, 2012; UN Women 2016) .
  • Gender budgeting into public finance:
    • Informing tax reforms.
    • Revising budget classification procedures to integrate gender in shaping intergovernmental fiscal transfers.
    • Fiscal decentralization efforts.
    • Local budgeting and assessing the effectiveness of public expenditure.

Distribution of the Gender Related Budget in the Total Budget

Distribution of the Gender Related Budget
YearDistribution
2005 - 062.79
2012 - 135.91
2018 - 194.99

Section 88C

  • One tax exemption.
  • Woman below the age of 65 was entitled to an additional rebate on taxation.
  • Tax exemptions under Section 88C marginally benefited women in India as only 4 percent of economically active women are in the formal sector.
  • The 88C exemption for women was eventually phased out.
  • Some states offer concession on stamp duty charges if a property is registered in the name of a woman.
  • Certain municipal corporations also offer rebate on property tax.
  • Banks also offer lower interest rate on home loans for property registered in a woman՚s name.

Examrace Team at Aug 20, 2021