Gender Responsive Budgeting in India: Concepts, Framework & Experiences with Special Reference to the Empowerment of Women Entrepreneurs | Original Article

ABSTRACT:

ABSTRACT

In the midst of several initiatives taken across the world for the empowerment of women, Gender Budgeting has evolved as comparatively a new concept. It refers to the systematic examination of budget programmes and policies for their impact on women. Australia was the first country to formally incorporate gender budgeting into its budget process. Since then, many other countries have experimented with gender budgeting. It has also received support from various multilateral agencies for its expansion across the developing world. A significant number of States in India have introduced gender budgeting but the lack of any standardised nomenclature for the different schemes makes it difficult to replicate or to assess them. The paper provides the background and development of the concept of Gender Budgeting, discusses the framework for the implementation of Gender Budgeting, highlights some of the Gender Budgeting experiences from India and other countries and presents the conclusions reached from different learning experiences for the empowerment of the women entrepreneurs.  Thus, this paper is a small step to draw attention of people within and outside the government, women's organizations, non-governmental organizations, academia and even common citizens-to ensure that gender budgeting exercises are productive and can gradually become institutionalized as a standard part of budgeting so that India can make progress with greater women’s participation in its growth story.