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Gender responsive
DEC 19 - Agender responsive budget is an assessment of the different impacts of budgetary expenditure on women and men. It ensures that the needs and interests of individuals from different groups are addressed in the budget. Therefore, a gender responsive budget is one of the most effective tools to mainstream gender in policies and planning to redress inequalities and promote women’s economic and socio-political rights. However, gender responsive budgeting needs to be extensively used by the government and non-governmental sectors because the country cannot move on the path of development without addressing gender as women comprise half of the human resources.
Nepal has embarked on the process of institutionalising the gender responsive budgeting (GRB) system by establishing the Gender Responsive Budget Committee at the Ministry of Finance which is primarily responsible for making the budget gender responsive by reviewing and monitoring the patterns of budget allocation and implementation, evaluating public expenditure from a gender perspective, disseminating information on gender responsive budget to the government and making recommendations for improvements. This committee, which is coordinated by a joint secretary from the budget division of the Ministry of Finance, has representatives from the National Planning Commission, Ministry of Women, Children and Social Welfare, Ministry of Local Development and UNIFEM as members.
The Ministry of Finance has given emphasis to translating policies to address inequalities and empowerment of women through deliberate efforts to direct the flow of resources to specific and targeted programmes and also track public expenditure from a gender perspective. In the past, various efforts have been started in Nepal to integrate the gender perspective in the development policy framework. Some of the important initiatives taken so far include gender assessment studies, gender audit of various ministries, gender orientation and sensitisation efforts at all levels of the government, establishment of gender focal points and development of gender-sensitive programmes. The significant contribution of women to the national economy has been recognised in the annual budget speech. The Tenth Plan/PRSP and the TYIP has also recognised women empowerment as a key objective and gender mainstreaming as an operational strategy to meet this objective.
The Ministry of Finance has used five quality indicators to analyse the fiscal year’s budget from a gender perspective. All the indicators have been given equal weightage, 20 percent for each indicator. These indicators comprise capacity building of women, participation of women in the overall programme cycle, women’s share of the benefit, employment/income generation of women, quality reform in time consumption and minimisation of workload to women. The budgets have been ranked taking these indicators into consideration. Budget allocations with a rating above 50 percent have been termed “Direct Gender Responsive” and those with a 20 to 50 percent rating have been called “Indirect Gender Responsive”. Budget allocations with less than 20 percent have been categorised as “Gender Neutral”.
The Ministry of Finance formally introduced the GRB system from the fiscal year 2007/08 with UNIFEM providing technical and financial support. In this context, the Ministry of Finance has revised the budget forms, planning guidelines, manuals and related software to make them compatible with GRB approaches. Similarly, the ministry has conducted training and orientation programmes for officials of various ministries. The total budget for the current fiscal year 2009/10 is Rs. 286 billion, out of which Rs. 49 billion has been earmarked for programmes directly benefiting women. This is about 17.3 percent of the total budget. Similarly, the share of the indirect gender responsive budget allocation is Rs. 104.16 billion, or 36.4 percent of the total budget. Likewise, the proportion of the budget allocation that has been termed gender neutral is 46.3 percent, or Rs. 132.32 billion. These figures provide us valuable policy feedback indicating that more efforts need to be made to make future budgetary processes more gender responsive.
The major sectors identified for gender responsive budget allocations are women children and social welfare, education, health, local development, infrastructure, industry, commerce and supply, culture and tourism, agriculture, forest preservation, science and technology and governance reform.
Nepal is a signatory to the Convention on the Elimination of All Forms of Discrimination Against Women, Beijing Platform for Action, Millennium Development Goals, United Nations Security Council Resolution 1325 and many other international conventions for gender equality. To fulfil these international commitments and achieve gender equality, the government has launched various programmes towards positive discrimination. A large scale scholarship programme for girls’ education has been introduced at the school and university levels. There is a provision for construction of female toilets in public schools. The government has set programmes for social and legal empowerment of women.
We have a provision for providing a discount of 25 percent on the registration fee when transferring land to women, and a 10 percent discount on income tax to women professionals. Similarly, the government has targeted expansion of micro-credit programmes for poverty alleviation primarily at women. There is a provision for 24-hour operation facility including maternity service and cash grants to women for delivery expenses at public hospitals and health care centres. Moreover, each VDC has established a woman health volunteer fund and a motherhood and infant care fund. In the current fiscal year, the government has allocated a special budget for one-time cash grants to women health volunteers. The annual budget has a provision for cash grants to encourage inter-caste marriage and widow remarriage.
To empower and protect women’s rights, there is a programme to set up half-way houses for women victims of domestic violence and sexual harassment. Similarly, the government is launching support programmes for conflict affected children and females. The government is committed to extending the women development programme to all VDCs. These are a few sample programmes launched by the government to promote gender equality. All these efforts show its commitment to women empowerment and social inclusion.
(The author is revenue secretary, Ministry of Finance)
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