Gender Budgeting and Entrepreneurship: A PolicyMix forWomen Empowerment in India

Abstract

The Christian Mythology states that the first woman, Eve was created out of the ribs of Adam and not from his head or feet, so that she can walk with equality in every respect. In our Indian mythology too women were considered as the epitome of moral excellence and a distinct place of importance in the society was adhered to her. On one hand she is contributing to the economic India by serving as doctors, teachers, entrepreneurs small and big, in the unorganized sector as daily labourers and on the other hand she holds the society together as a mother, sister, wife and daughter. She is the cornerstone of the society and why not for no responsibility is greater than the responsibility of continuing the race. But the condition of women throughout the world gives depressing facts. From the various reports of UNDF, UNICEF, UNIFEM, World Bank, it appears that Women work two-thirds of the world’s working hours and yet they earn only 10 percent of the world’s income and owns less than one percent of the world’s property. The Indian figures do not give us much scope to cheer for. The gender gap in every sector in India is quite prominent. In this backdrop, our paper tries to find out the role of gender budgeting as a tool patronized by the five year plans of the Government of India on promoting Women Entrepreneurships, with the strong belief that only entrepreneurial activities can lead to self-sustaining women empowerment. In this paper we have envisaged the overall empowerment in two stages – takeoff and upliftment. The first phase takeoff is to assist the women entrepreneurial mind to set up the business and the phase two stands for the overall socio-economic development so that the women who had taken off may land on an uplifted stage. In the next stage of the paper, the gender sensitive budgetary allocations and schemes, that can promote this takeoff, are identified and critically analyzed. Finally, a two storied Women Entrepreneurial Model is proposed through this paper along with some other policy suggestions at different levels of operation.