What makes the work on Gender Responsive Budgeting (GRB) appear in a different genre of scholarly work on gender, is that national budgets, policies and budgetary processes come to the centre stage of feminist scrutiny—an area that has hitherto been on the periphery of the gender agenda. Yet the gap between the pitch of the current spate of work on GRB and the potential that this line of enquiry throws up, is amply large—the silver lining being the possibilities that this gap opens up to propel more work in this area- work which is more artistic than the current spate. GRB, as a tool, is witnessing a huge buy-in from both the government and civil society alike. The last count shows that more than 90 countries across the globe are engaging with GRB. For a tool that was experimented with only in mid 1980s in Australia, 90 countries today, is not insignificant by any standard. Part of the reason for this significant up scaling could be that it puts the limelight on budgets – a powerful instrument of governance and yet an area that traditionally the women’s movement has given only scant attention to (unlike say for instance, other issues like violence, conflict, HIV and AIDS, among others). However one is tempted to argue, that part of the reason for this huge buy-in could be that GRB can be done as an entirely technical exercise, sometimes even a political exercise confined to disaggregating public expenditure by its incidence on men and women and can just stop at that. It will therefore, be a significant opportunity lost, if we don’t seize the opportunity that the huge endorsement of GRB within government quarters offers, and expand as well as ground the GRB discourse in a critical feminist analysis in the substantive equality framework for women.
The experience of GRB has been very in different countries of Asia Pacific—different strategies have been used; different actors have been involved; it has been tried at different levels. If all these were to be put on one canvas, a colorful yet incongruous, motley picture would emerge. If there is one message that comes out clearly it is that there is no one blueprint for GRB. Yet, in terms of what countries in Asia Pacific have done on GRB, two important ‘first steps’ seem to emerge. These are (a) a large number of trainings and capacity building workshops on GRB have been organised; and (b) Gender Budget Statements have been produced. Both these are important ‘first steps’ but by its very definition, a first-step necessarily implies that there will be next steps when one moves beyond the first step. Trainings in GRB for policy makers has attracted a large amount of resources made available either by donors or from the government’s own coffers. The results of such trainings could be very sustainable – projects come and go but capacities of national government machineries built on GRB, will remain within the host country. That being said, there is also a need to look critically at GRB trainings. Most countries lack any systematic roadmap of where these trainings or capacity development strategies should lead to. There is also often little clarity on what level of change is desired from capacity development approaches—individual changes (for instance, Finance Ministry Officials being able to understand GRB), collective changes (for instance, Finance Ministry Officials being able to bring out a Gender Budget Statement), or systemic changes (the capacity of the entire budget making process to be more gender responsive). It is important to understand what level of change one is striving for, as that will have important bearings on our strategy. New work on understanding the different capacity development needs has been done1 and can be a valuable resource in guiding capacity development work on GRB.
The other first step that many countries have taken in GRB is to produce Gender Budget Statements. While there are inherent limitations in the methodologies and formats being used to produce GRB Statements in most countries, there are advantages as well2. In India, for instance, it is definitely a step towards greater transparency as in one document one gets an estimate of how much of the budget of the government is going towards women3. Other countries use formats that are more qualitative and less quantitative, Pakistan and Indonesia’s GRB Statements, for instance4. (The focus in more qualitative formats is to identify the gender issues in the programme and sub programme and then try to assess the inputs, outputs, achievements and indicators from a gender lens). The other distinct advantage of various line ministries going through the grill of producing GRB Statements is that at least it triggers a consciousness amongst the implementing agency officials of figuring out how responsive each programme/policy has been to gender and should be an important part of the consciousness of any policy maker. However, it is important to keep reemphasizing that Gender Budget Statements is not equal to Gender Responsive Budgeting. GB Statements could be a tool that some countries have chosen to use, but the ultimate objective has to be nothing less than making budgets and policies more gender responsive. Merely interrogating expenditure, or its incidence, does not suffice. The mose useful format for GRB Statements, what mix of qualitative or quantitative data it provides, at what level it should be pitched etc., need more work.
While GRB is getting unprecedented attention at the policy making level, as a keen student of gender, it is important to ask ourselves critical questions such as what has this tool meant for the reality of women’s lives? Has it affected women at the grassroots in any significant way? Even as an advocate of GRB, I would say that much of the GRB work has remained an exercise on paper and has not touched the lives of grassroots women in any significant way. However, it holds tremedous potential to do so.
One such work on GRB that is significantly different from the current spate of efforts on GRB is the work being done in the state of Kerala in India and it is important to understand the lessons of this work. The work on GRB in Kerala charters a new course for GRB and addresses some of the long standing gaps in GRB work.
The GRB work in Kerala is not centered on the GB Statement (although the state has initiated the process of preparing GB Statements there is clear understanding that GRB needs to go beyond that). The real achievement of GRB in Kerala is that efforts have been made to reach women at the grassroots. Better still, it is not just that those sectors that have been traditionally perceived as “soft sectors”, such as health and education, are seen as “gender-related”; GRB work in Kerala steers right into the heart of sectors such as infrastructure, roads, ports, etc., that have been most resistant to gender incursions into their domain, let alone incursions of GRB.
The New Kerala Model
What is fundamentally different about the Kerala model is that rather than breaking allocations by whether they fall on men or women, in Kerala the focus is on developing schemes that address women’s specific needs and priorities and realigning them to make them more gender responsive. GRB comes in to ensure that funds are made available for these schemes (or components within existing schemes) to the extent possible.
Infrastructure planning and policy almost always pay scant attention or neglect gender issues. To facilitate women’s participation in the public sphere, it is important to ensure that infrastructure in public places acknowledges that women could and should be its users. For instance, a survey of public offices in the districts of Kerala showed that a number of public buildings do not have separate toilets for women. For women who commute to work, basic facilities like rest rooms and toilets are required at bus stations. It is in this context that a major scheme on Gender Friendly Infrastructure has been formulated, a scheme in which several departments come in, such as, Kerala State Road Transport Corporation (KSRTC), Public Works Department (PWD), Police, Ports, Housing, as also Health, Social Welfare and IT sector. (Infrastructure here is used in a broad sense to include social infrastructure to facilitate women’s participation in the economy as well in addition to physical infrastructure).
Some of the highlights of this scheme include: Firstly, basic amenities such as separate rest rooms, toilets, drinking water facilities being built in all depots and sub depots of Kerala State Road Transport Corporation; and separate toilets for women in public buildings in the district and taluk headquarters which do not have one (under the aegis of the Public Works Department).
Secondly, many rural women have to commute long distances for work in urban areas and acknowledging that women (single women or women heads of women-headed-households) and poor women in particular, cannot afford to rent apartments in urban areas, due to prohibitive costs, an innovative housing scheme for low paid workers, in particular women, has been developed in Poojapura (Trivandrum corporation) and Kakkanad (Cochin corporation). These flats have government regulated low rentals and can be rented by poor women either for family they head or in a group (this is under Kerala State Housing Board in the Housing Department). While at the moment 33 percent of the flats are reserved for women, in the newer sets of flats coming 100 percent will be provided to women, if demanded, In addition working women’s/ college students hostels are also being set up by PWD and Higher Education Department.
Thirdly, to ensure workers’ safety and welfare in minor ports two buses for conveyance of women workers in Beypore and Vizhinjam (Ports) and night shelter for fisherwomen in two fish landing centres have been arranged for. Also since women have to wait for several hours at the fish drying units, separate waiting rooms have been created for women to ensure their safety and ease the waiting stress (under the aegis of the Harbour Engineering and Fisheries Department).
Fourthly, since much of the increase in women’s labour force participation rate in India is in the informal sector, to facilitate women’s employment to move from sectors characterized by low wages, low growth and drudgery to the new sectors of high growth importance such as IT, infrastructure facilities for skill enhancement of women students have been set up in ten Women’s Colleges (government and aided) across the state (under the IT Department). A particularly successful programme for developing communicative skills, English learning besides basic computer knowledge is REACH, under the Kerala State Women’s Development Corporation). REACH not only provides the physical infrastructure but also the basic skills to women to move from the informal sectors to the formal economy. These courses are available free of charge to BPL women and APL women at nominal charges.
Fifthly, for women survivors of violence, a room has been provided in the General Hospital, Trivandrum, which creates a physical space for counseling for survivors of violence (the Bhoomika counseling centre). The centre provides counseling to those identified by doctors of the hospital as survivors of domestic violence. In addition, the Bhoomika counseling centre has trained medical staff on issues of violence. They also have an outreach programme on violence on radio. Likewise, the Homeopathy Department, Health and Family Welfare Department of Govt. of Kerala, has launched its first gender based programme for women’s health care—Seethalayam—which seeks to address women’s mental, physical and social health. This centre has just been started and it has conducted training programmes for doctors on health needs of women, with a focus on violence. To begin with, it dealt with issues like how to give medical and non-medical support to women affected by violence. The overall objective of the centre is to provide comprehensive health services to women.
Also since an increasingly large number of women are being diagnosed with breast cancer (the most common types of cancer reported by women are breast cancer, cervix cancer and thyroid cancer) at the Regional Cancer Centre, which treats more than 13,000 cases of cancer every year, funds have been made available by the State Planning Board under GRB to augment advanced facilities for early detection of cancer for women such as digital mammogram, augmenting the screening and diagnostic facilities of cancer in women in peripheral centres, equipment for early diagnosis and treatment of cervical cancer such as video colposcope, video hysteroscope, video cytoscope and others.
In some states in India police stations have started programess for women or trainings for their own staff on gender. But what is new and different in Kerala is that Victim Support Cells have been set up that provide women coming to police stations a space (physical space) to discuss issues such as sexual violence which they would feel uncomfortable discussing in public. However, more importantly, and in a move that will have significant impact on women survivors of violence who approach the police, an amount of Rs. 10,000 per police station (and within that there is a cap of Rs. 500 per sitting), has been earmarked to be used by the police to facilitate the woman’s conveyance costs between the police station, hospital, counseling centre, legal support cells, etc. as well as for other incidentals. For poor a woman who walks out of a violent household without any support, availability of this small amount of resources at the police station will be of great help. Kerala’s Police Department is the first and probably amongst the very few, if not the only Police Department in the country to have a plan scheme!
While one could argue that these schemes appear to be addressing practical needs of women, by ensuring mobility, security and safety and by facilitating their integration with and access to the market, they also address strategic gender needs of women.
In addition to Gender Friendly Infrastructure, two other major schemes of importance from a gender lens are the Income Support Scheme for self employed workers in traditional industries like coir, handlooms, khadi and fisheries who fall in the BPL category and the Food Security Scheme. The Income Support Scheme ensures Rs.150 per day for at least 100 days of work; its mode of implementation is flexible and will vary depending on the specificity of the industry (Labour Department together with coir, handloom, khadi and fisheries departments). The other scheme, the Food Security Scheme (as part of the larger Programme on Food Security in the state), also addresses a critical gender gap. In the light of growing evidence of agriculture becoming feminized, to recognize women farmers in their own right, “sangha krishi” (or collective farming) activities of Kudumbashree, is one of the largest women’s empowerment projects in the country with over 37 lakh members. This scheme will be implemented through women’s collectives in agriculture and animal husbandry including, poultry. For the first time agriculture and animal husbandry in which women work in large numbers will have a major scheme that focuses exclusively on women, operating under Departments of Agriculture and Animal Husbandry.
The traditional school-book definition of GRB says that GRB is not about more budgets or resources for women. The Kerala Model of GRB turns this discourse on its head and says that in as much as women’s empowerment needs other things, we also need to ensure greater resources for women. There can be other ways of doing GRB as well that go beyond GRB Statements and disaggregating numbers, such as making guidelines and the operational details of schemes more gender responsive, doing gender audits of programmes and institutions, etc. More effort is needed in these directions.
‘Gender Budgeting Statement: Misleading and Patriarchal Assumptions’, Economic and Political Weekly, July 29, 2006.
‘What Does Budget 2007-08 Offer Women?’, Economic and Political Weekly, April 21, 2007
‘Gender Responsive Budgeting in Pakistan: Experience and lessons learned’, by Nadeem Mahbub and Debbie Budlender, Nov 2007 and Assessing gender responsive local capacity development in INDONESI A, Copyright © UNDP 2009
(The author is grateful to Dr. Mridul Eapen, Member State Planning Board Kerala, whose work in Kerala inspired this article.)
