Though there is much conversation about women being the pillars of economic growth in India, the Union and State governments are not backing really this promise.
| Photo Credit: ANI
The Union and State governments regularly talk about their commitment to women’s empowerment. One of the four pillars of a Viksit Bharat 2047 is mahila or woman. The Finance Minister mentioned women several times in her 74-minute speech during the Union Budget.
One of the most powerful tools to show commitment to the cause of women’s empowerment is through fiscal backing. This year, the gender budget has increased to 8.9% of the overall Budget.
Chart 1 shows the gender budget over the years as a share of the overall Budget (in percentage).
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It is important to note here that there is no separate gender budget in the overall Budget; this term simply refers to all the allocations to gender-related schemes under various ministries and departments.
Chart 2 shows the distribution of the gender budget over the years
Where does the money go? Gender budgets have three components: Part A comprises schemes with 100% provision for women and girls; Part B comprises schemes with 30-99% allocations for women and girls; and Part C reflects schemes with allocations for women and girls below 30% of the provision. Part C was introduced only in the 2024-25 Budget. Over time, as seen in Chart 2, the proportion of Part A has decreased and the proportion of Part B has increased.
Since the inception of the concept of a gender budget, the highest number of ministries/departments (49) have reported allocations for gender-related schemes this year. Twelve new ministries/departments have reported allocations for gender-related schemes this year. This indicates that there is a push to diversify the gender budget from the Ministry of Women and Child Development. Around 10 ministries/departments have reported more than 30% of their allocations to gender-related schemes for FY 2025-26.
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In her Budget speech, the Finance Minister mentioned increased allocations to women and said that this has been made possible by increasing funds for women-led enterprises. The Budget mentions several promises for women and women led-development, especially in the micro, small and medium enterprises (MSME) space. But is the Budget really going to cater to all this?
Chart 3 shows the scheme/ministry/department-wise distribution of the gender budget
Only 0.7% of the gender budget has been allocated to the Ministry of MSMEs (Chart 3). The Ministry offers schemes such as the Mahila Coir Yojana, the Entrepreneurship and Skill Development Programme, and the Scheme of Fund for Regeneration of Traditional Industries. The allocation for skill development of women in the entrepreneurial space is only ₹38.4 crore, which is 0.0009% of the gender budget. Surprisingly, the Ministry of Skill Development and Entrepreneurship and the Capacity Building and Skill Development Scheme under the Ministry of Electronics and Information Technology has only been allocated around 0.23% of the gender budget.
Almost 10% of the gender budget has been allocated to the Department of School Education and Literacy and the Department of Higher Education. Education and technical training are among the pillars of sustainable long-term growth. They provide a highly literate and skilled workforce. These investments will also effectively close the gender gap in the labour market. Investments such as these are a step towards Viksit Bharat.
The agricultural industry that has contributed the most to the increased female labour force participation rate over the years has only been allotted 4.2% of the gender budget. Interestingly, ₹15,000 crore out of the ₹18,739 crore of the allocation to the Agriculture Department is to the Pradhan Mantri Kisan Samman Nidhi (PM-Kisan) scheme, which falls under Part C. Under the scheme, income support of ₹6,000 per year in three equal instalments is provided to all land-holding farmer families. However, since the land that the women work on is mostly owned by men, they will not benefit from the scheme.
In 2023-24, 64.5% of women (15-59 years) cited childcare and personal commitments as the reason for not working, indicating the urgent need for childcare services. However, Saksham Anganwadi and the Poshan 2.0 scheme have only been allocated 3.9% of the gender budget. More importantly, this share has not increased significantly in the past few years.
Approximately 17.5% has been allocated to the Pradhan Mantri Awas Yojana (housing scheme). Also, 8.9% of the gender budget has been allotted to the Mahatma Gandhi National Rural Employment Guarantee Scheme. While these schemes do empower women, it is important to invest in skill development and provide child and elderly care for long-term empowerment. For a Viksit Bharat, there needs to be focused investments towards women-led development in the domains of manufacturing and finance.
Further, the States have varied experiences with allocating funds to women-centric programmes. Gujarat allocates more than 37% of its budget to women, whereas Maharashtra allocates a mere 3%.
Therefore, though there is much conversation about women being the pillars of economic growth in India, the Union and State governments are not backing really this promise. Without state support, it is going to be challenging to achieve gender parity or work towards women-led development.
Shabana Mitra, Sharavni Prakash and Anjhana Ramesh are researchers at ICRIER
Also read:Union Budget 2025: Spending on IITs, IIMs and higher education in general stagnates | Data
Published – March 07, 2025 08:00 am IST
