Women empowerment in India needs gender budgeting. What are the requirements and status of gender budgeting in the Indian context?

Gender budgeting is not a separate budget for women but a tool to mainstream a gender perspective across all budgetary policy — analysing how allocations affect women and reallocating resources to close gender gaps. Given persistent disparities in India, it is central to substantive women's empowerment.

Requirements for gender budgeting

• Sex-disaggregated data to assess differential impacts of schemes and spending.
• Gender Budget Cells in ministries to appraise and design programmes.
• Political commitment and integration into the planning and budgeting cycle, not a token statement.
• Capacity building of officials and outcome-based monitoring and audit.

Status in India

• A Gender Budget Statement has been part of the Union Budget since 2005-06, presenting allocations in Part A (100% women-specific) and Part B (at least 30% for women).
• Gender Budget Cells exist across many ministries, and several States have adopted gender budgeting.
• Schemes like Beti Bachao Beti Padhao, PMAY (housing in women's names) and Ujjwala reflect gendered allocation.

Gaps

• Coverage is a small share of the total budget and skewed toward a few ministries.
• Weak outcome tracking, patchy data and treating it as an accounting exercise rather than a planning tool.

Gender budgeting must move from reporting allocations to measuring outcomes — closing gaps in health, education, work and safety — to genuinely translate spending into women's empowerment.