In an attempt to discuss the aspects of gender-sensitive budgeting and its impacts on reducing gender inequality, SANEM and Bangladesh Mahila Parishad jointly hosted a webinar on “An Analysis of Gender Sensitive Budgeting: Bangladesh Perspective” on 28 September 2021. The webinar was chaired by Dr Fauzia Moslem, President, Bangladesh Mahila Parishad, and moderated by Ms Eshrat Sharmin, Senior Research Associate, SANEM. Dr Selim Raihan, Professor, Department of Economics, University of Dhaka, and Executive Director of SANEM, delivered the welcome remarks. The keynote presentation was given by Dr Sayema Haque Bidisha, Professor, Department of Economics, University of Dhaka, and Research Director of SANEM. Among the panelists were present Ms Selima Ahmad, Member of Parliament and President, Bangladesh Women Chamber of Commerce and Industry; Dr Sharmind Neelormi, Professor, Department of Economics, Jahangirnagar University, and Central Committee Member, Bangladesh Mahila Parishad; and Ms Samanjar Chowdhury, Operations Lead, BRAC Youth Platform.

The session commenced with Dr Fauzia Moslem going over the collaboration between Bangladesh Mahila Parishad and SANEM. She discussed how the employment of women is not enough for them to be empowered. In fact, aspects such as the policies undertaken in the national budget are crucial to narrow down the gap in gender equality, which leads to the concept of gender budgeting. Since 1990, Bangladesh Mahila Parishad has been working on gender budgeting, which eventually led to almost 43 ministries of the Government of Bangladesh (GoB) adapting this concept. However, it has been observed that gender budgeting can be conducted rigorously for the past few years. Moreover, the impacts of gender budgeting on reducing gender equality have to be assessed. Bangladesh Mahila Parishad began working on this concept along with Dr Sayema Haque Bidisha and Dr Sharmind Neelormi. SANEM readily accepted the proposal to research the concept of gender-sensitive budgeting further. Dr Moslem anticipated that the discussion in the webinar would shed light on the impacts that gender-sensitive budget has on reducing gender inequality and its further impact on this issue.

During his welcome remarks, Dr Selim Raihan stressed the importance of ensuring women’s social, political, and economic rights, stating that economic growth would be deemed meaningless without the proper establishment of such rights. He stated how even though all government bodies have widely acknowledged the need for women’s empowerment, proper implementation has been lacking. Especially from the onset of the COVID-19 pandemic, the burden on women has increased disproportionately. Speaking of how the gender budgeting template is adequately comprehensive, he raised the question of how much it is actually implemented. Dr Raihan concluded by mentioning how the collaboration between Bangladesh Mahila Parishad and SANEM will work towards SDG 5, gender equality.

Dr Sayema Haque Bidisha began her keynote presentation by discussing gender-sensitive budgeting, stating that it aims to reduce gender-based discrimination across different stages of society. The Recurrent Capital, Gender, and Poverty Database (RCGP) was established by Government of Bangladesh’s Finance Division in 2003 to better monitor and report resource allocation to achieve gender equity. The study focused on 42 ministries of the GoB, each of which is reviewed annually as a part of the Gender Budget Report prepared by the Ministry of Finance (MoF).

Attempting to show the gender sensitivity of budget allocations in various ministries, Dr Bidisha analyzed the improvements and deteriorations in some key gender equality indicators. Pointing out how the rate of primary level completion and gender parity index has improved, she shed light on the challenges such as higher education, TVET enrollment, and technological inclusivity, the rates of which have declined. Child marriage was also highlighted as a key area of concern. With 51% of women in 2020 being involved in child marriage, Bangladesh ranks among the top 10 countries in the world. The rate of gender-based violence is also concerning, with 54.7% of women being a victim of intimate partner violence in 2015. Dr Bidisha stressed the importance of working on these areas to reduce discrimination.

Bangladesh lags behind in most indicators of female labour force participation rate and employment. The Labour Force participation rate of women has not improved much from 2010, with the percentage of male and female labor participation rate being 38.6% and 36.37%, respectively, in 2017. Especially, the percentage of the female population is glaringly higher in NEET, at 47%, compared to merely 10% of the male population in NEET. The unemployment rate of women is also more than twice that of men, at 6.8%.

Stressing on the importance of gender-sensitive budgeting, Dr Bidisha talked about how this can be a tool to address existing fault lines in policy implementation. This can help the allocation of funds based on gender disparity across all sectors, along with the assistance of a proper monitoring and evaluation mechanism. To implement a gender budget in Bangladesh, a call circular outlining 14 criteria and yardsticks is sent out to all ministries. After every program is assessed and checked, a gender-sensitivity score of between 0 to 100 is assigned to the projects. These evaluations are then analyzed through the RCGP model to decide the percentage of expenditure allocation towards women’s benefit. MoF formulates the gendering budgeting report after amalgamating the information of all such ministries.

Between the fiscal years 2009-10 and 2021-22, expenditure allocation towards women has gone up. However, for several ministries such as the Ministry of Primary and Mass Education, and the Health Services Division, even though indirect expenditure has gone up, a downward trend in direct expenditure has been observed since such important ministries have been reducing direct budgeting. Although FY 2021-22 has seen the implementation of several key policies and programs for women in the budget, that is only one side of the coin. On the other side, several notable gender-sensitive projects have been unapproved after funding was discontinued.

Dr Bidisha went on to emphasize the various challenges faced by Bangladesh when it comes to gender budgeting. She mentioned how the gender budget comprises both operating and development budgets, even though the impact of these two budgets is not similar for the marginal population or the larger cohort, along with the fact that not all development projects contribute towards female empowerment in the same way manner. Lack of transparency and the discontinuation of crucial gender-specific projects has also been an issue. She categorized the gender sensitivity of ADP into three categories: gender-specific policies, such as the establishment of Four Mohila Polytechnic Institutes in the country; gender-induced policies, such as the development of Entrepreneurs and Connection for Employment project; and undefined policies, such as the establishment of four engineering colleges, polytechnic institutes in 23 districts, and increased facilities for admission in existing polytechnic institutes. A steady increase in “directly” gender-sensitive projects has been observed from 2017 to 2021. Still, the proportion of directly gender-sensitive projects have gone down by 2% in the Ministry of Women and Children Affairs during this period.

Dr Bidisha went over the international best practices performed in Australia, the EU, and across the G-7 countries, such as gender-specific analysis of public financial management, the inclusion of unpaid care economic ideas, and gender mainstreaming of all community policies. Overall, the gender-budgeting exercise has room for improvement in Bangladesh, such as doing ex-ante and ex-post gender assessments, which are tools followed by OECD countries. Moreover, the lack of gendered disaggregated data of beneficiaries and impacts and the discontinuation of certain important GSB projects have been key challenges for gender-sensitive budgeting. In addition, key international best practices have not been introduced yet, and several ministries spend proportionately less on gender-specific projects

The speaker summed up her presentation with some key recommendations. She emphasized the need to strengthen monitoring and evaluation of projects, with the implementation status of the programs being monitored regularly. She suggested prioritizing projects that directly target SDGs (e.g., 5,8,3,4) during budget allocation. The importance of impact analysis and gender-sensitivity analysis was stressed upon, along with the need for improved coordination between ministries, suggesting MoWCA to lead the ministries on these issues. This would require further strengthening of the capacity of MOWCA. The Mid Term Budgetary Framework (MTBF) also needs to be reviewed for incorporating better allocation in gender-sensitive projects. Finally, international best practices such as gender audit, ex-ante, and ex-post gender impact assessment of policies should be gradually introduced in gender budgeting.

Valuable remarks from the other panelists followed the presentation session. Ms Selina Ahmad, Member of Parliament, talked about the importance of increased gender allocation towards women in the grassroots population of the country. Mentioning the need for increased gender equality for leading Bangladesh towards becoming a middle-income country, she spoke about the discrimination faced by the rural women in her election area, from lack of access to education to the discrimination because of skin complexion. Reaffirming the words of Dr Bidisha, Ms Ahmad emphasized the importance of monitoring and evaluation, raising the question of how gender-sensitive the government employees themselves are. Stating how the honorable Prime Minister is enthusiastic about women’s issues, she stated that this on its own is not adequate, but all government bodies have to be involved, stressing the importance of cross-cutting of the 17 SDG goals.

Ms Samanjar Chowdhury highlighted how the COVID-19 pandemic had increased school dropout rates in both male and female children. Along with that, the instances of child marriage and child labor have increased. Ms Chowdhury remarked that employment is not the same as empowerment, mentioning how garment workers have no financial independence over the salary they earn. For empowerment to happen, it has to happen across all classes, especially rural women and gender minorities such as transgender people, thus providing a voice to voiceless individuals. She stressed the importance of human-centered design(HCD), pointing out the tendency of the policymakers to “imposing prescription” without really involving the stakeholders impacted by the decisions.

Dr Sharmind Neelormi stressed the importance of mainstreaming gender-sensitive budgeting, mentioning how the government needs to have a political will for an effective gender-sensitive budget. She mentioned how climate policies regarding women often mention the effect of cooking stoves on Greenhouse Gas emission, whereas there should be a focus on women entrepreneurship in green growth. She mentioned that the GoB has a DPP manual, which, however, is rarely used. Emphasizing the need for capacity building and the use of gender-sensitive models such as GIS mapping, she hoped for this to impact the next generation as well.

The open discussion session saw much speculation about how women end up doing unpaid care work at home even after higher education and how lack of social safety nets makes the last years of their lives difficult for these women. The need for increased accessibility of such discussion was also pointed out, suggesting creating a Bengali booklet for those people excluded from a mostly English-based conversation.

The session chair Dr Fauzia Moslem ended the session by stating the need for a focal point from where such gender-sensitive allocation can be observed, the role of which should be undertaken by MOWCA. She mentioned that violence against women should be the most important aspect in ADP, showing how even female financial independence can increase violence against women. Dr Moslem mentioned that women lag behind the most when it comes to their domestic rights, which leads to the lack of recognition of their unpaid care work, property rights, and other similar rights. Hoping that the natural rights of women would be established in society, she concluded that if the betterment of women in their domestic lives was ensured, this would be further reflected in better implementation of the gender budget.

Download the presentation of the webinar.