Gendering Budget: Does Budget 2024 Really Empower Women?

Anganwadi worker Sukara Sinha listened intently to the Union Finance Minister Nirmala Sitharaman’s Budget 2024 speech. A resident of Dantewada in Bastar region of Chhattisgarh, Sinha has been a frontline healthcare worker for nearly two decades. She voted for the Bharatiya Janta Party in the last Legislative Assembly elections held in the state in November and then again in the Lok Sabha elections which concluded in June 2024. And yet, Sukara remained unimpressed with the announcements made for women. Despite being dubbed an “equal partner” in the visionary new India’s “story of growth and national progress” by The Economic Survey 2023-24 released on the eve of Budget day, Sukara did not feel it catered to her needs. "It did not mention anything about Anganwadi workers who had only a few years ago been dubbed by the PM as 'essential',” she rued.

In keeping with the Economic Survey, the BJP-led NDA government has allocated over Rs 3 lakh crore for promoting women-led development and schemes benefiting girls and women. The minister also spoke about building hostels and establishment of creches for professional working women to increase women’s participation in workforce. This is to be done in “collaboration with industry” and the “partnership will seek to organise women-specific skilling programmes, and promotion of market access for women SHG enterprises”. These moves, Sitaraman said, signalled the union government's commitment toward women’s empowerment. The increased allocation of funds for women’s welfare, employment opportunities and skill training was indicative of a shift from women’s development to women-led development, she said. A pension scheme, 'Vatsalya', has also been launched for minors and in addition, the FM said that states will be encouraged to reduce stamp duties for all and consider further lowering of duties for properties purchased by women to promote property ownership among women. "If I had the money to purchase a house, I wouldn’t still be waiting for my number in the PM Abhas Yojana," Sukara said with a laugh. She has tried twice to get an accommodation under the scheme since its launch in 2015 but luck seems to have eluded her. She claims it isn’t luck but “money power and connections”. 

The budget is being hailed by some for allegedly increasing its spending on women's development with NDA supporters calling it a win for “gender budgeting”. And yet, workers like Sukara feel let down. “The Budget did not mention anything about women’s wage gap, about improving condition of working women and nothing for essential workers like Anganwadi and ASHA employees,” Sukara said over the phone.

In March 2020, hundreds of scheme workers including Anaganwadi and others responsible for implementing government welfare schemes, gathered in New Delhi’s Jantar Mantar to demand recognition of their work, minimum wages, social security, and beseech the Narendra Modi-led BJP government to fulfil its 2018 promise of a wage hike. “No announcements were made with regard to those,” she stated. 

It isn’t just Sinha. Several experts have deemed the present Budget as inadequate when it comes to fulfilling or even representing the needs of women. “Some of the biggest problems that women are facing on ground today include a huge amount of unpaid labour, massive increase in food prices and cost of living crisis in general and no jobs especially for younger women. What does the budget do about any of these things? Nothing,” says economist Jayati Ghosh. 

Data from the Periodic Labour Force Survey (2022-23) indicates a rise in female labour force participation rate (FLFPR) in the last six years. The data comes with a caveat. “About 37 per cent of the women who are described as “employed” are actually doing unpaid work in family enterprises, which is an increase of about 24 percent from previous years,” Ghosh stated. Women unpaid workers rose from 31.7 percent of total women workers to 37 percent from 2017-18 to 2022-23, as per a report by the Observer Research Foundation. The increasing FLFPR could be the result of more cognisant collection and analysis of data the historical mismeasurement of women’s work. 

“The shocking thing is — the basic things that could have been increased such as food subsidies, allocation to National Rural Employment Guarantee Act (NREGA), health spending, have been ignored. These are the things that affect women,” Ghosh said. The NREGA, for instance, is a gender sensitive scheme employing a high percentage of women across states. Increasing funds for the scheme would have a positive impact on women’s employment. 

Other aspects of the Budget that left many disappointed include the “meagre” spending on the health and education sectors which employs a disproportionate number of women workers. Moreover, women who are employed in these sectors like Sukara Sinha or are engaged in implementation of the various welfare schemes of the government in the health and education sector (Anganwadi, ASHA workers etc) need to be acknowledged as government workers, they should have minimum wage and proper working conditions.

Though the budget is not a tool for social upliftment of women, one can apply the “gender lens” on economic and policy processes to ensure equitable distribution of economic resources and benefits among workers across genders. “Gender budgeting”, as described by economic researcher Janet G Stotsky, is an approach to budgeting in which fiscal policies and administrative procedures are structured to address gender inequality. This includes gender-sensitive formulation, resource allocation, and constant monitoring necessary to address the vulnerabilities that women encounter day-to-day. “When properly done, one can say that gender budgeting is good budgeting.” Stotsky noted. In a 2016 International Monetary Fund (IMF) working paper investigating the impact of gender budgeting on gender inequality and fiscal spending in India, Stotsky and economist Azad Zaman noted that “states with gender budgeting efforts have made more progress on gender equality in primary school enrolment than those without, though economic growth appears insufficient to generate equality on its own”.

Even though budgets cannot directly affect social change, it can create incentives that encourage positive social change or allow one to overcome their social obstacles or limits. The Ujjwala scheme, for instance, was good idea in principle. But after that first free cylinder, many families could not acquire the next one because the of rise in gas prices. “Ujjwala is not directly an employment scheme but basically, if one spends eight hours a day looking for fuel wood, when will they have the time to look for a job? There is thus a link between gas prices and women’s employment in that manner”.

For the most part, though, many feel that in India “gender budgeting”, an essential feature of economic planing in advanced economies, is just hogwash. “In the name of gender budgeting, they shift around different expenditure heads and claim this much is for women,” Ghosh said. While the government is reaping applause for its alleged increase in gender spending, development economist Dipa Sinha, in a detailed gender-based analysis of the Budget published in the The Wire, concluded that there has been “no increase in the budget for women this year, rather some accounting trickery which shows a substantial rise” by changing the manner of reporting on the “gender based statement” (GBS) that is part of the budget documents. The GBS is a record of all the provisions under different schemes across different ministries and departments included in the budget that benefit women and girls and includes schemes of three types under different heads.

Sinha noted that though the allocated Rs 3 lakh crore across different heads of GBS appear increased from previous years, the change lies in “what gets reported in this statement and how”. Though there has been an improvement in what gets included in GBS, the appearance of alleged increase in gender spending, Sinha noted, is due to “methodological differences” and that the total “gender budget is not comparable” with previous years. “Just looking at the totals conveys a message of a huge increase which in reality is only a difference in the accounting standards used,” Sinha noted.

One of the reasons is that schemes that were previously not considered under GBS have now been added to the GBS categories. Sinha noted that “one of the only genuinely ‘new’ schemes for women seems to be the Namo Drone Didi scheme which has an allocation of Rs 500 crore”.

Policy analyst Mohan Guruswamy also feels that the so-called “gender sensitive” budgeting is nothing but “window dressing”. He emphasised that to increase employment of women, one has to increase overall jobs in the market. “The Economic Survey has expressly said that 78.51 million jobs have to created each year in India to meet the demands of the nation. But no job creation schemes have been introduced. No schemes or incentives have been announced to facilitate a shift from land to manufacturing or service sector,” Guruswamy said. “Capital expenditure, which is essential for employment generation, has not been increased. So all this about women’s empowerment is just a political sop."