Preetam B Yashwant, Joint Secretary, Ministry of Women and Child Development speaks at the UN Ministerial Conference on women empowerment, in Bangkok, Thailand, Tuesday, Nov. 19, 2024
| Photo Credit: PTI

The 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, according to a United Nations report, which analysed how countries in the region are placed compared to the Sustainability Development Goals (SDG) adopted in Beijing 30 years back.

It, however, said India faced challenges in the implementation of gender budgeting due to a lack of sex-disaggregated data and exclusion of key programmes that benefit women.

Apart from India, it mentioned Philippines as one of the countries which have successfully adopted gender-responsive budgeting. “These countries acknowledge the importance of integrating a gender perspective into the public financial management system in promoting gender equality and women’s empowerment,” it said.

The report ‘Charting New Paths for Gender Equality and Empowerment: Asia-Pacific Regional Report on Beijing + 30 Review’, which was released here on Tuesday (November 19, 2024), however, pointed out that despite the important steps taken by both India and Philippines to ensure that budget allocations align with the commitment to gender equality, 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.

“Therefore, it is advisable that the Ministry of Women and Child Development and the Ministry of Finance continue 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, of the ultimate goal of ensuring the participation of the most vulnerable groups of women in planning and budgeting purposes,” it said.

The Indian government in its statement at the Asia Pacific Ministerial Conference of the Beijing+30 Review said that there has been a 218% decadal increase in gender budgeting in the country.

Joint Secretary, Ministry of Women and Child Development Preetam B. Yashwant said that in the current financial year, the allocation for gender-budgeting was worth $37 million.

He said that India’s implementation of Beijing SDG goals was guided by the “women-led” development.

“India has witnessed a paradigm shift in governance to ensure that women lead the way as architects to conceptualise, design and monitoring of measures that  shape our development projectile,” he said.

At a separate side-event at the conference, India show-cased this model of “women-led” development by highlighting the leadership of women in Panchayati Raj Institutions and Urban Local Bodies due to 33% reservation as well as women’s collectives or Self-Help Groups which have substantially contributed to their financial empowerment.

The Beijing declaration and Platform for Action had been adopted by countries across the world in 1995 as a framework for advancing gender equality and the empowerment of women and girls.