The GOI has adopted gender budgeting, but a lot more can be done to improve the budgets.
Gender Budgeting is not a separate budget for women; rather it is a dissection of the government budget to establish its gender-differential impacts and to translate gender commitments into budgetary commitments. The main objective of a gender-sensitive budget is to improve the analysis of incidence of budgets, attain more effective targeting of public expenditure and offset any undesirable gender-specific consequences of previous budgetary measures.
A group of women activists has just met with the finance minister to secure adequate funds for women.
In particular, widow pension schemes, shelters for women in distress, hostels for single working women with or without children, and shelters for children need support to expand and improve their quality of services. The restriction on widows with sons losing their eligibility for receiving pension should be done away with, they added.
It is not that special services for women don’t exist, it’s that they need much attention and improvement. Especially at the state level, since it’s the states who are ultimately accountable for using all the money allocated by the centre.
See here for the budget of 2005-6, and here (click on gender budgeting on the left) for the Ministry of Women and Child Development site.
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