India’s Journey with Gender Budgeting: Initiatives and Achievements

When the Government of India presented the Union Budget for 2005-06, it quietly introduced something that would reshape how public money is tracked, allocated, and evaluated: a dedicated Gender Budget Statement. Two decades later, that single statement has grown into a fiscal strategy spanning nearly 50 ministries, states, and a wide ecosystem of training institutions. Yet the question of whether gender budgeting has genuinely transformed outcomes for women, or simply made existing spending more visible, remains very much alive.

What gender budgeting actually means 🔗

Gender budgeting is not a separate budget for women. It is a fiscal tool that examines the government’s entire budget through a gender lens, asking a simple but far-reaching question: who benefits, and by how much? The approach assumes that apparently neutral spending decisions, on roads, hospitals, rural employment, or energy, can land very differently on men and women because of existing social and economic inequalities.

According to the Ministry of Women and Child Development, gender budgeting is a fiscal strategy for translating the government’s commitments towards gender equality and women’s empowerment into concrete budgetary commitments. Its institutional roots lie in the National Policy for Empowerment of Women, 2001, which called for time-bound action plans with a gender perspective built into the budgeting process itself.

The road to 2005: how it all began 🔗

Although 2005-06 is usually cited as the starting year, the groundwork was laid much earlier. The Ninth Plan (1997-2002) introduced the Women’s Component Plan, which earmarked 30 percent of developmental funds for women across sectors. Evidence soon revealed that earmarking alone was a second-best strategy, since the funds were not consistently spent on women. This pushed policymakers toward a broader, macro-level approach.

Research by the National Institute of Public Finance and Policy (NIPFP) played a decisive role. Based on inputs from NIPFP and the Expert Committee on Classification of Budgetary Transactions, the Finance Minister announced in the 2005-06 budget speech that gender budgeting would be institutionalised. A Gender Budgeting Secretariat was placed in the Ministry of Finance, and sectoral ministries were asked to create Gender Budgeting Cells.

The first Gender Budget Statement, published in 2005-06, covered just 10 demands for grants, which expanded to 24 demands across 18 ministries and 5 Union Territories the following year. Interestingly, Odisha had already taken the plunge in 2004, becoming the first state to adopt gender budgeting even before the Union government.

How the Gender Budget Statement is structured 🔗

The Gender Budget Statement, printed as Statement 13 in the Expenditure Profile of the Union Budget, organises allocations in a simple classification designed for transparency.

Part A: fully women-centric schemes 🔗

Part A captures schemes where 100 percent of the budget is directed at women and girls. Typical examples include maternity benefit programmes, working women’s hostels, schemes for safety of women, and the One Stop Centres under Mission Shakti.

Part B: pro-women schemes 🔗

Part B lists schemes where between 30 and 99 percent of the allocation is expected to reach women. This is the largest chunk by value and includes big-ticket programmes like the Pradhan Mantri Awaas Yojana, Mahatma Gandhi National Rural Employment Guarantee Scheme, and Samagra Shiksha.

Part C: the newest addition 🔗

A third category, Part C, was introduced in 2024-25 to capture schemes with less than 30 percent allocation for women and girls. The addition allows a more holistic view of women-related spending that earlier fell below the reporting threshold.

The institutional machinery 🔗

Three layers hold the system together. The Gender Budgeting Secretariat in the Ministry of Finance anchors the process through budget call circulars and the annual expenditure profile. Gender Budgeting Cells (GBCs) in line ministries analyse existing allocations and propose gender-responsive changes. Finally, the Ministry of Women and Child Development coordinates capacity building, issues guidelines, and runs the Gender Budgeting Scheme.

Since 2007-08, the Ministry of Women and Child Development has implemented the Gender Budgeting Scheme, which provides financial grant-in-aid to government departments, national and state training institutes to conduct workshops on gender budgeting. Revised guidelines were issued in May 2024, and a Charter for Gender Budget Cells now spells out their responsibilities.

At the sub-national level, the Finance and Planning departments and Departments of Women and Child Development or Social Welfare jointly drive the exercise. According to the Ministry of Women and Child Development, 27 States and Union Territories have institutionalised gender budgeting in some form, with Uttar Pradesh, Tripura, Karnataka, and Gujarat being early adopters after Odisha.

Two decades of growth in allocations 🔗

The size of the gender budget has grown substantially since inception. The Department of Women and Child Development’s allocation in 2006-07 stood at roughly Rs 4,853 crore. By 2020-21, the overall gender budget had climbed to Rs 1,43,462 crore.

Recent years have seen a sharper rise. A Press Information Bureau release noted that the share of Gender Budget allocation in the total Union Budget increased to 8.86 percent in FY 2025-26 from 6.8 percent in FY 2024-25, with Rs 4.49 lakh crore reported for the welfare of women and girls. This was a jump of over 37 percent in a single year, and the highest number of ministries and Union Territories, 49 and 5 respectively, ever reporting allocations.

In the Union Budget 2026-27, the Gender Budget constitutes 9.37 percent of the total budget, up from 8.86 percent in 2025-26. In rupee terms, the allocation has reached roughly Rs 5.01 lakh crore, marking the highest gender budget India has ever recorded.

Where the money is going 🔗

Priorities have shifted over time. Early gender budgets leaned heavily on reproductive and child health and the Integrated Child Development Scheme. Today the pattern is more diverse, though still concentrated. The top ministries reporting 30 percent-plus allocations for women in 2025-26 include the Ministry of Women and Child Development at 81.79 percent, the Department of Rural Development at 65.76 percent, and the Department of Food and Public Distribution at 50.92 percent, with Health, Higher Education, School Education, Home Affairs, and Drinking Water and Sanitation also showing significant shares.

Housing has emerged as a dominant theme. Under rural development, Part A allocations include PMAY-Gramin at roughly Rs 52,575 crore, underscoring housing as a women-centred asset that strengthens security and stability. Investments in water and sanitation through the Jal Jeevan Mission have also expanded, reflecting the recognition that women spend disproportionate time on unpaid domestic work linked to water collection and caregiving.

Capacity-building and state-level traction 🔗

Budget numbers mean little without people who can read them critically. Capacity building has therefore been a central pillar of India’s gender budgeting journey. The Ministry of Women and Child Development has published training manuals and handbooks, run orientation workshops with line ministries, and funded state-level training programmes.

In 2025, a landmark National Consultation on Gender Budgeting was held at Vigyan Bhawan. Senior officers from 40 central Ministries and Departments and 19 states, along with representatives from UN Women, the Asian Development Bank, and national institutes, participated in the day-long consultation. The Union Minister launched a Gender Budgeting Knowledge Hub, a digital repository that now houses guidelines, budget circulars, training materials, good practices, and scheme documents from both central and state governments. The consultation also marked a review of “Twenty Years of Gender Budgeting in India: Achievements and Challenges.”

Flagship schemes driving the agenda 🔗

A closer look at specific schemes shows how gender budgeting now touches almost every stage of a woman’s life.

Nutrition and maternal health 🔗

Poshan Abhiyaan and the Pradhan Mantri Matru Vandana Yojana anchor the nutrition and maternal welfare components, while the Suposhit Panchayat Scheme, introduced in late 2024, targets community-level malnutrition through Panchayat-based outreach.

Safety and empowerment 🔗

Mission Shakti consolidates earlier programmes under two sub-schemes: Sambal, covering safety interventions such as One Stop Centres and the Women Helpline, and Samarthya, which drives economic and social empowerment. The Nirbhaya Fund continues to support fast-track courts, crisis centres, and safe city projects.

Education and skilling 🔗

Samagra Shiksha, Kasturba Gandhi Balika Vidyalayas, and the National Mission on Education through ICT focus on closing gender gaps in schooling. For women in science, technology, and entrepreneurship, programmes like the IndiaAI Mission and the PM Formalisation of Micro Food Processing Enterprises Scheme are increasingly gender-integrated.

Employment and livelihoods 🔗

MGNREGS, the Deendayal Antyodaya Yojana-National Rural Livelihoods Mission, and PM-Kisan provide income support and work opportunities that disproportionately reach women, especially in rural areas.

Achievements worth acknowledging 🔗

Two decades on, some gains are undeniable. Gender budgeting has created the first credible, government-led time-series dataset on gender-specific public expenditure in India. It has pulled in ministries once seen as gender-neutral, from Petroleum (through Ujjwala) to New and Renewable Energy. It has catalysed policy innovations like Mission Shakti and influenced tax measures such as rebates on properties registered in women’s names.

Visibility itself is a victory. Budget debates in Parliament now routinely raise questions about gender allocations, and civil society organisations have the data to hold ministries accountable.

Where India still falls short 🔗

Despite the progress, serious gaps persist. The Observer Research Foundation has pointed out that the gender budget has long hovered around 4-5 percent of the total Union budget, comprising less than 1 percent of GDP, falling short of providing a sustainable mechanism for concrete change. Although the 2025-26 and 2026-27 figures mark a departure from this range, the structural limitations remain.

Several issues recur across independent analyses. Reporting can be inconsistent, with the entire allocation of schemes like PMAY sometimes placed under Part A even when women are not 100 percent of beneficiaries. Programmes with strong female participation, like MGNREGS, often show only a fraction of their true gender component. As the Drishti IAS review noted, PMAY-Grameen reports only 23 percent of houses allotted to women despite being classified in Part A, which claims 100 percent allocation for women.

Concentration is another concern. A handful of ministries and schemes, PMGKAY, MGNREGS, and PMAY-G among them, account for the bulk of the gender budget, while smaller but potentially transformative initiatives remain under-funded. Gender audits are weak, sex-disaggregated data is patchy, and Gender Budget Cells are often understaffed.

Finally, intergovernmental fiscal transfers remain largely gender-blind. Scholars writing for Brookings have argued that transfer formulas rarely include gender criteria, which limits their redistributive potential and creates wide inter-state variation in gender budgeting outcomes. Embedding gender indicators in Finance Commission formulas could help correct this.

The road ahead 🔗

Twenty years in, gender budgeting in India sits at an inflection point. The framework is established, allocations are growing, and a Knowledge Hub now connects practitioners across tiers of government. The next decade will test whether the country can shift from tracking inputs to measuring outcomes, expand coverage beyond a few high-spending ministries, and tie gender budgeting more tightly to fiscal federalism and the Sustainable Development Goals.

If done well, the payoff is substantial. A more equitable fiscal framework can raise female labour force participation, reduce the unpaid care burden, and translate the long-promised “women-led development” from a slogan into a measurable reality.

What do you think? Should Gender Budgeting Cells be made statutory so that their composition, staffing, and outputs are legally mandated, rather than left to administrative discretion? And how might Finance Commission transfers be redesigned so that states with weaker gender indicators get the resources they most need to close the gap?

References

1. https://missionshakti.wcd.gov.in/gender-budgeting/about
2. https://www.ideasforindia.in/topics/social-identity/fifteen-years-of-gender-budgeting-in-india-a-retrospective
3. https://gender-financing.unwomen.org/sites/default/files/media/Gender%20Budgeting%20in%20India%20by%20Dr%20Vibhuti%20Patel.pdf
4. https://wcd.gov.in/offerings/samarthya-gender-budgeting-scheme
5. https://inclusiveias.com/gender-budgeting-upsc/
6. https://www.pib.gov.in/PressReleasePage.aspx?PRID=2098912
7. https://missionshakti.wcd.gov.in/gender-budgeting
8. https://www.orfonline.org/expert-speak/understanding-the-gender-dividend-in-india-s-budget
9. https://www.pib.gov.in/PressReleasePage.aspx?PRID=2137727
10. https://www.orfonline.org/research/gender-responsive-budgeting-in-india-a-stocktaking
11. https://www.drishtiias.com/daily-updates/daily-news-analysis/gender-budget-2025-26
12. https://www.brookings.edu/articles/embedding-gender-equality-in-indias-fiscal-framework-the-role-of-gender-budgeting/