Put data to optimal use for women
Posted: Wed Feb 12, 2025 8:12 am
In the past decade, approximately 90% of India’s expenditure on gender responsive budgeting has been limited to four ministries—Rural Development, Education, Health, and Women and Child Development. Within these four ministries, some efforts are made to recognize the unique needs of women and design programs specifically to meet them. But for ministries focused on other sectors or themes, the government has adopted a blanket approach to gender, which translates into more general mandates and target-setting at the last mile. Programs focused on these other sectors do not identify gender-specific targets or approaches – and this is mostly the case when it comes to financial inclusion initiatives launched by the Ministry of Finance.
To better address the needs of India’s women, stakeholders cambodia whatsapp number data must first identify development areas that need gender-specific targets, then create dedicated budgets to meet those targets. To do this, India would benefit greatly from a national gender action plan. The plan should define short, medium and long-term strategies and goals to support women’s economic empowerment, and should include distinct categories of women, such as single women, women below a certain income level, and women of different ages. Such a plan could include gender mainstreaming – i.e., the integration of a gender perspective into the preparation, design, implementation, monitoring and evaluation of policies, regulatory measures and spending programs, with a view to promoting equality across genders and combating discrimination. This gender mainstreaming could be implemented across all layers of administration, including the central, state and district levels, and could mandate the gender-sensitive design of programs to enable equitable outcomes for both women and men. For financial inclusion, this national gender action plan should create mandates for the banking infrastructure to bridge gender gaps. However, these actions should go beyond surface-level approaches like “pink” credit cards marketed to women, focusing instead on priority sector lending, in which a certain proportion of financial institutions’ lending portfolios must be dedicated to women customers, and on mitigating the systemic barriers that women face as they engage with the banking system.
To better address the needs of India’s women, stakeholders cambodia whatsapp number data must first identify development areas that need gender-specific targets, then create dedicated budgets to meet those targets. To do this, India would benefit greatly from a national gender action plan. The plan should define short, medium and long-term strategies and goals to support women’s economic empowerment, and should include distinct categories of women, such as single women, women below a certain income level, and women of different ages. Such a plan could include gender mainstreaming – i.e., the integration of a gender perspective into the preparation, design, implementation, monitoring and evaluation of policies, regulatory measures and spending programs, with a view to promoting equality across genders and combating discrimination. This gender mainstreaming could be implemented across all layers of administration, including the central, state and district levels, and could mandate the gender-sensitive design of programs to enable equitable outcomes for both women and men. For financial inclusion, this national gender action plan should create mandates for the banking infrastructure to bridge gender gaps. However, these actions should go beyond surface-level approaches like “pink” credit cards marketed to women, focusing instead on priority sector lending, in which a certain proportion of financial institutions’ lending portfolios must be dedicated to women customers, and on mitigating the systemic barriers that women face as they engage with the banking system.