Gender Budgeting: Integrating Gender Perspectives into Fiscal Policies

When governments prepare their annual budgets, the numbers may look neutral on paper. But behind every allocation, a silent question lingers: do men and women benefit equally from this spending? For decades, the answer was often “no.” Gender Budgeting emerged as a powerful corrective tool, pushing fiscal policy to actively acknowledge and address the different realities of women and men. It is not about creating a separate budget for women. Rather, it is about viewing the entire budget through a gender lens to ensure that development benefits reach everyone equitably.

What is gender budgeting? 🔗

Gender budgeting is the application of gender mainstreaming to the budgetary process. In simple terms, it involves analyzing government budgets to assess how they respond to the needs of women and men, and then reallocating resources to promote gender equity. According to the Ministry of Women and Child Development, gender budgeting in India is a fiscal strategy for translating the government’s commitments towards gender equality and women’s empowerment into budgetary commitments.

The approach recognizes a simple but often overlooked truth: fiscal policies do not affect men and women in the same way. A road-building project, a health scheme, or an agricultural subsidy may have very different implications for women because of existing social and economic inequalities. Gender budgeting asks policymakers to look beyond the surface and examine who truly benefits from public spending.

The core idea behind the gender lens 🔗

The rationale is straightforward. National budgets impact women and men differently through patterns of resource allocation. Gender budgeting is not a separate accounting exercise but a continuous process of integrating a gender perspective into policy formulation, implementation, and review. It does not demand a parallel budget for women. Instead, it demands affirmative action woven into every line of the main budget.

The journey of gender budgeting in India 🔗

India’s tryst with gender budgeting began in the early 2000s, when feminist economists and women’s rights groups pushed for a systematic review of public expenditure. The first substantive step came when the National Institute of Public Finance and Policy (NIPFP) was commissioned to develop an analytical methodology for gender budgeting. As the Brookings Institution notes, the study established the first chapter on gender in the Economic Survey of India and was tabled in Parliament a day before the Budget Speech in 2001.

The real turning point came in 2004-05, when the Ministry of Finance formally institutionalized gender budgeting through its expert group on the Classification of Budgetary Transactions. A dedicated Gender Budget Statement was introduced in the Union Budget of 2005-06, marking the country’s formal entry into gender-responsive fiscal policy.

Key milestones worth remembering 🔗

Over the past two decades, the framework has evolved substantially. A Gender Budgeting Cell was established in the Ministry of Finance in 2005, followed by guidelines directing ministries and state governments to set up similar cells. In 2010-11, the National Mission for Empowerment of Women was launched to strengthen inter-ministerial coordination. More recently, in 2020-21, the Ministry of Women and Child Development collaborated with the Ministry of Finance to launch an Online Gender Budgeting Portal to track fund allocation and utilisation in real time.

Understanding the gender budget statement 🔗

The Gender Budget Statement (GBS) is the flagship document of this exercise. Published every year along with the Union Budget, it provides a snapshot of public expenditure directed towards women and girls by reviewing the gender components in programmes designed by various ministries. The Ministry of Finance issues an annual Gender Budget Circular that guides ministries to prepare the statement in a standardised format.

The three-part structure 🔗

The GBS is organised into three distinct parts that help classify how schemes contribute to gender equality:

Part A covers schemes with 100 percent budget allocation for women. These are fully women-specific programmes such as maternity benefits, working women’s hostels, and widow pension schemes.

Part B includes schemes where at least 30 percent of the allocation is intended for women. Large flagship programmes like MGNREGA, major health and education missions, and sanitation initiatives fall under this category.

Part C was introduced more recently. In the Union Budget of 2024-25, Part C was included as schemes with allocations for women and girls below 30% of the provision. This addition helps capture the broader “gender footprint” of public expenditure that earlier went unreported.

Gender budgeting cells as institutional backbone 🔗

Institutional design is what separates gender budgeting from mere rhetoric. India’s approach rests heavily on Gender Budgeting Cells (GBCs), which function as coordination units within ministries and departments. These cells are mandated to translate broad gender commitments into specific financial commitments in their respective sectors.

What gender budgeting cells actually do 🔗

GBCs are not decorative bodies. They conduct gender-based impact analysis, assess beneficiary needs, and carry out beneficiary incidence analysis to identify where public expenditure can be reprioritised. As the Brookings analysis explains, these cells undertake two types of work: ex-post gender budgeting, in which the existing budget is analysed through a gender lens, and ex-ante gender budgeting, in which the needs of women are identified first and then incorporated into the budget. The ex-ante approach is considered stronger because it shapes allocations proactively rather than auditing them after the fact.

Growth in institutional coverage 🔗

The expansion of GBCs tells its own story. When gender budgeting began in 2005-06, only a handful of ministries were involved. According to a recent stocktaking by the Observer Research Foundation, fifty-seven of India’s 58 central ministries have set up gender budgeting cells, and schemes of 41 of the 93 departments were reported in the gender budget statement of 2022. This institutional anchoring has been crucial for sustainability.

The four phases of gender budgeting in India 🔗

Scholars studying India’s experience often describe gender budgeting as unfolding in four sequential phases: knowledge building and networking, institutionalising the process, capacity building, and enhancing accountability. Each phase addresses a different weakness in the system.

Knowledge building created the intellectual foundation through research by NIPFP and advocacy by women’s movements. Institutionalisation embedded the practice within the Ministry of Finance and line ministries. Capacity building focused on training officials to understand and apply gender analysis. The fourth phase, accountability, aims to link resources to results through audits and parliamentary review.

Why gender budgeting matters for fiscal policy 🔗

Gender budgeting is not just a social justice project. It is also sound economics. Investing more in women improves social indicators, strengthens human capital, and makes development more efficient. Empirical evidence from India has been encouraging. Studies have linked gender budgeting to a decrease in violence against women and a reduction in gender disparities in educational outcomes.

Influence on revenue policies too 🔗

India’s gender budgeting experience is also notable because it has shaped revenue policies, not just expenditure. Tax rebates on properties owned by women and differential rates in certain instruments are examples of how gender concerns have entered the revenue side of fiscal policy. Few countries have taken this step, and it places India among the leading examples globally.

The current state of gender budget allocations 🔗

The numbers from the most recent budgets paint an evolving picture. The share of Gender Budget allocation in the total Union Budget rose to 8.86% in FY 2025-26 from 6.8% in FY 2024-25. The total outlay has grown from around ₹0.98 lakh crore in 2014-15 to approximately ₹4.49 lakh crore in 2025-26.

Ten ministries now allocate more than 30 percent of their budgets to gender-related initiatives. The Ministry of Women and Child Development leads at nearly 82 percent, followed by the Department of Rural Development at around 66 percent, and the Department of Food and Public Distribution at over 50 percent. Twelve new ministries, including Railways, Panchayati Raj, and Financial Services, began reporting allocations in the Gender Budget Statement for 2025-26, signalling a widening institutional embrace.

Challenges that continue to hold back progress 🔗

Despite two decades of steady progress, gender budgeting in India has significant weaknesses. Many Gender Budgeting Cells remain under-resourced and lack personnel trained in gender analysis. In several ministries, GBCs act mainly as reporting units rather than as analytical engines shaping policy.

Data gaps and reporting issues 🔗

A persistent issue is the lack of gender-disaggregated data. Without it, assessing outcomes becomes guesswork. The Observer Research Foundation points out that some allocations are symbolic or poorly linked to actual outcomes, and many departments report expenditure under Part B without rigorous impact assessment. There have also been concerns about reporting inconsistencies, with entire allocations of some schemes being classified under Part A when only portions genuinely target women.

From allocation to impact 🔗

The larger critique is that gender budgeting in India has focused too much on how much is allocated and too little on what those allocations actually achieve on the ground. Moving from an input-based accounting exercise to genuine outcome monitoring requires better data systems, stronger audit mechanisms, and a willingness to reallocate resources based on evidence.

The way forward for gender-responsive fiscal policy 🔗

Strengthening gender budgeting requires action on several fronts. First, Gender Budgeting Cells need more technical staff and stronger linkages between planning and budget formulation. Second, the framework should move decisively from input tracking to outcome measurement, using indicators like the Female Labour Force Participation Rate and the Gender Parity Index. Third, Panchayats and Urban Local Bodies should be encouraged to prepare local gender budgets so that the practice reaches the grassroots.

Some analysts have also argued that gender budgeting should be made legally mandatory within India’s fiscal legislation to secure its long-term sustainability. Embedding it in law would insulate it from shifting political priorities and ensure continuity across governments.

There is also a need to expand the conception of gender itself. Current practice largely treats gender as a binary, but meaningful gender budgeting must also consider the needs of transgender persons and recognise that women are not a homogenous category. Caste, class, region, and disability shape how women experience public spending.

A tool that is still maturing 🔗

Gender budgeting in India has travelled a considerable distance since the early 2000s. It has moved from being an academic exercise to a formally recognised fiscal practice, from covering nine ministries to spanning nearly the entire central government, and from a marginal share to almost nine percent of the Union Budget. The institutional architecture of Gender Budgeting Cells and the annual Gender Budget Statement has given the practice permanence.

Yet the deeper promise of gender budgeting lies not in the numbers reported each February but in whether those numbers translate into real changes in the lives of women. That transformation requires better data, stronger accountability, and a political culture willing to treat gender equality not as an add-on but as a core objective of fiscal policy.

What do you think? Do you believe that gender budgeting in India has reached a stage where it is genuinely shaping policy priorities, or is it still largely a symbolic accounting exercise? And how might local bodies like Panchayats be empowered to take gender-responsive budgeting closer to the lives of ordinary women?

References

1. https://missionshakti.wcd.gov.in/gender-budgeting/about
2. https://www.orfonline.org/research/gender-responsive-budgeting-in-india-a-stocktaking
3. https://www.brookings.edu/articles/embedding-gender-equality-in-indias-fiscal-framework-the-role-of-gender-budgeting/
4. https://uppcsmagazine.com/gender-budgeting-in-india-a-pathway-to-inclusive-economic-development/
5. https://inclusiveias.com/gender-budgeting-upsc/
6. https://www.pib.gov.in/PressReleasePage.aspx?PRID=2098912