Empowerment of Women through Gender Budgeting in India with reference to the Assam
Abstract
Nobel Laureate Malala Yousafzai quotes on Women‟s Rights and Empowerment dated
22.10.2018 that “No struggle can ever succeed without women participating side by side
with men. There are two powers in the world; one is the sword and the other is the pen. There
is a third power stronger than both, that of women”. In the recent last few decades
empowerment of women is such issue which has been highlighted by the scholars,
government, media etc. The woman is the back bone in the family and the society. Gender
budgeting is emerging a new topic may not very familiar to many of us. It is a process to
which government keeps a gender perspective while formulating plans, polices and budgets.
National budgets put their impact on men and women alike, through the allocation of
resources. Almost 48% of the population comprises of women but they lag far behind men in
many respects. Gender budgeting can therefore act as tool to empower women.
The term Gender Budget is a unique in govt. budgeting. In a democratic country,
human development means to lead a meaningful life, which is measured by various indices
such as the Human Development Index (HDI), Gender Development Index (GDI), Gender
Inequality Index (GII), etc. The questions of gender development, gender in equality, gender
justice have gained importance today because in our society women are less advantageous
position than men. They are differentiated and discriminated in various fields only because of
being women. It is on the grounds that gender budgeting acts as one of the important tools
which can be used to promote women‟s equality and empowerment.
In this paper, an attempt has been made focus on how the process of women empowerment
can be made quicker through so called gender budgetingalong with the problems for proper
implementation of such budgets and measures to help in development strategies using the
same. Further how gender budget is effective to bring about such positive changes to reduce
gender gap and the government policies and commitment can be made for effective to bring
about such positive changes in a greater manner.
