A HIGH allocation for women in the budget and the stringent oversight of the allocation can ensure a proper use of the budget funds meant for spending on women to attend to gender inequality. In the light of such a proposition, participants in a pre-budget dialogue, ‘Advancing gender-responsive budgeting FFD4 Outcome’ that the Citizen’s Platform for SDGs, Bangladesh and the UN Women Bangladesh organised in Dhaka on May 26, have suggested that the government should take measures under a gender-responsive budgeting, which is a financial strategy to integrate a gender perspective in all stages of the budget process. With such perspectives reflected from planning to implementation to evaluation, the initiatives would ensure that the funds are spent on promoting gender equality and attending to specific needs and priorities of women and girls. This could be a crucial tool for achieving development goals and promoting gender equality. Given that the population of Bangladesh has a higher proportion of females than males — the 2022 population census shows that the male population is about 81.71 million and the female population 83.34 million — this is also logical and pragmatic that there should be commensurate spending on women and girls.
The people who attended the dialogue have suggested the reinstatement of civil service job reservations for women, the recognition of unpaid caregivers, a six-month maternity leave in the private sector and the use of information and communications technology for the empowerment of women and checking inequality against women. They have also urged the government to make data available for proper planning and implementation of gender-sensitive issues after increasing allocations through increased revenue mobilisation. A Centre for Policy Dialogue research fellow has said that the shrinking space for less than expected revenue mobilisation has prevented the government from going for a higher expenditure on development projects that has slowed down economic growth and employment creation. Women keep facing more vulnerabilities in such a situation, also featured by uncertainties on the political front and investment by the private sector. The research fellow also points out problems in data on women employment, noting that in 2022, about 41 per cent of women were showed employed while the actual figure was 19 per cent. Besides, as a UN Women analyst has said, scopes are also limited when it comes to the monitoring of the allocations under the gender budget. A deputy secretary to the women and children affairs ministry has said that gender budgeting accounts 34 per cent of the overall budget of the 2024–2025 financial year, noting that many government officials have no idea about gender budgeting.
The government should, therefore, ensure gender budgeting and step up oversight of spending for a commensurate development of women.
