What is Gender Budgeting?

• Gender Budgeting is an approach to government fiscal policy that seeks to use a country’s budget(s) as a tool to resolve societal gender inequality and promote inclusive development. 
• It is an exercise that applies a gendered-lens to the allocation and tracking of public funds to achieve gender equality. It is an example of outcome-oriented expenditure allocation.
• India started releasing a Gender Budget along with the Union Budget in 2005-06. 

Objectives

• The purpose of Gender Budgeting is threefold:
  • to promote accountability and transparency in fiscal planning;
  • to increase gender responsive participation in the budget process, for example by undertaking steps to involve women and men equally in budget preparation;
  • to advance gender equality and women’s rights.

Why in News?

• The United Nations has released a new report titled ‘Charting New Paths for Gender Equality and Empowerment: Asia-Pacific Regional Report on Beijing + 30 Review’, which analyzed how countries in the region have progressed towards implementing the Beijing Declaration and Platform for Action (BPfA) in Asia and the Pacific.

• The report noted that adoption of gender-responsive budgeting by Asia-Pacific countries like India demonstrates their strong commitment to ensuring the efficient allocation of resources based on the identified needs of women and girls.
• Apart from India, it mentioned the Philippines as one of the countries which have successfully adopted gender-responsive budgeting. 
• The report, however, pointed out that despite the important steps taken by both India and Philippines towards gender budgeting, both countries face challenges. India for instance struggles with the limited effectiveness of its GRB due to the exclusion of key programmes that benefit women and the lack of sex-disaggregated data.

Recommendations

• The report recommended the Government to make concerted efforts to address gaps in the design and use of the Gender Budget Statement, establish stronger monitoring mechanisms to enhance the quality of GRB efforts at the sectoral level; integrate GRB considerations during the budget prioritisation phase; and encourage sub-national governments to adopt GRB practices.