Women Empowerment through Gender Budgeting In India

This paper gives a broad overview of the gender budgeting initiatives in India, highlighting certain related issues that need to be addressed for making gender budgeting an effective tool for women’s empowerment. It does not seek to create a separate budget but looks for actions to address the needs of women in the areas like health, education and employment. Women & girls not only comprise a large part of the valuable human resources of the country, they are also individuals having their own identity & their socioeconomic development sets the foundation for sustainable growth of the economy & society. As a whole Gender Budgeting tends to focus on women because nearly about two third of the non-literate people in the world are women. As in many studies it is evidenced that the level of awareness of women related legislations (e.g. Domestic violence, dowry, rape, sexual abuse, child marriages trafficking of women etc.) is very low so more effective publicity is necessary. The best way to do so is to educate
the children, orient the teachers and ensure that next generation grows up with new thinking.