Budget 2005 is different from all the previous
ones as it is the first gender budget presented by the
government in the parliament. Both the Prime Minister
and the Finance Minister expressed their intent to pay
special attention to women's issues in addition to increasing
the allocation for Health and Family Welfare programmes.
Since women, their education and their empowerment,
are all key to the stabilisation of India's population,
gender analysis of budgets assumes importance for Population
First. A symposium on “Budget: What’s init
for women?” was organised with the support of
HDFC and UN Development Fund for Women (UNIFEM) on 24
March 2005.
The panelists included Prof. Nirmala Banerjee, Ms.
Kamini Banga, Dr. Aruna Kanchi, Ms. Veena Nayyar, Dr.
Divya Pandey and Ms. Benita Sharma.
This would be continued as an annual event to build
public opinion on making budgets more sensitive to the
needs of women.
As an outcome of the symposium on gender analysis of
budget Population First proposes to take up advocacy
activities in collaboration with UNIFEM and Resource
Centre for Women’s Studies of SNDT University
to bring in gender budgeting in at least one department
by the next year.
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