The real test lies in whether public services create equitable opportunities, address everyday concerns and improve lives and overall well-being of its people
Good governance is not measured merely by the money a government spends, but by whether its policies and public services create equitable opportunities and improve the lives of its people. Governance is often evaluated through economic growth, infrastructure creation, welfare expenditure and the delivery of public services. These are important measures of development, but they do not tell the entire story. A road may be constructed, a bus service introduced, a school established or a welfare scheme launched, yet the benefits may not be equally accessible to everyone. The Porvorim new flyover is a classic example of accessibility barrier. The difference lies in understanding how people experience development in their everyday life.
Gender-responsive governance is not a narrow agenda concerned exclusively with women. It is an approach to public administration that recognises how social roles, economic circumstances, safety concerns, mobility, care responsibilities and access to resources can influence the ability of different groups to benefit from government policies. It seeks to ensure that public decisions are informed by evidence and that public expenditure produces fair, measurable and inclusive outcomes.
Gender equality means ensuring equal rights, dignity and opportunities. Gender equity recognises that people may begin from unequal positions and that addressing particular barriers may be necessary to achieve fairer outcomes. For instance, providing equal access to vocational training is important, but women may also require safe transport, suitable working hours or childcare facilities to participate effectively. Similarly, a public transport service may be formally available to everyone. However, inadequate frequency, inconvenient timings, poorly lit bus stops or unsafe last-mile connectivity can restrict its practical use. A gender-responsive government therefore looks beyond the existence of a service to examine whether people can access and use it effectively.
The distinction is fundamental. Gender responsiveness does not mean automatically favouring women or assuming that women face disadvantages in every sphere. It means identifying the actual problem, determining who is affected and designing an appropriate response. Goa’s education indicators, for example, show why this evidence-based approach matters. According to the UDISE+ 2024–25 Goa profile, the reported secondary-school dropout rate was 12.2% for boys and 6.3% for girls. The secondary-to-higher-secondary transition rate was 88.6% for boys and 93.2% for girls. These figures remind policymakers that gender analysis must identify disadvantages wherever they occur rather than rely on assumptions.
Goa has achieved considerable progress in education, healthcare, infrastructure and social welfare. Nevertheless, important questions remain about women’s economic participation, unpaid care work, health, safety and access to productive resources. The Periodic Labour Force Survey annual report for 2025 places Goa’s female labour force participation rate at 27.4%, compared with 73.4% for males. The difference of 46 percentage points merits serious examination. Labour force participation includes people who are employed as well as those actively seeking work. These figures raise important policy questions. For instance, why it took several decades for Goa to get its first female bus driver in KTC? Are suitable employment opportunities available? Whether day care responsibilities restrict women’s participation? Are transport arrangements compatible with working hours? Do recruitment practices and workplace conditions affect women’s ability to enter employment? Do barriers in access to credit or government subsidies and lack of land ownership affect women’s ability to establish businesses? What were the reasons behind the recent resignation of a female employee at Chicalim Village Panchayat, and what does this reveal about the workplace environment and institutional support for women? The answers require a closer examination of the relationship between public policy and economic opportunity.
Unpaid care work is another important dimension. The Time Use Survey 2024 reveals that in Goa 20.4% of women aged 15–59 participated in unpaid caregiving, compared with 12.7% of men. These participation figures draw attention to a dimension of the economy that conventional employment statistics may not fully capture. Cooking, cleaning, caring for children and older persons, and managing household needs sustain families and support the wider economy, even when no wages are paid. Unreliable water supply can add to this burden. Investment in dependable public services, affordable childcare, eldercare and accessible transport can therefore have benefits extending beyond the immediate service delivered. It may release time for education, employment, entrepreneurship and rest.
A major instrument for translating this approach into practice is gender-responsive budgeting. It examines how government policies, programmes, revenue measures and expenditure affect women and men. It is not a separate budget for women, nor does it simply mean increasing benefits under women-specific schemes like Griha Adhar. For gender-responsive budgeting to become an effective instrument of governance, it must operate throughout the policy cycle of identifying the problem, designing the intervention, allocating resources, implementing the programme, monitoring delivery, assessing outcomes and conducting a gender audit. The focus may be disaggregated analysis of data, strengthening departmental gender budget cells, establishing measurable indicators and review implementation. The monitoring must move beyond inputs and outputs to outcomes.
The ultimate measure of success will not be the size of the gender budget or the number of schemes carrying a gender label. It will be whether girls and boys receive meaningful educational opportunities, women and men can participate in economic life, public spaces are safe and accessible, unpaid care burdens become more equitable, and public services reach those who need them. Thus, gender-responsive governance is not about counting women in the budget. It is about ensuring that every public rupee contributes to a fairer society and a better quality of life.
Therefore, in public policy domain, governance in Goa must move beyond the rhetoric of development, measured merely through impressive statistics, infrastructure projects and welfare schemes. The real test of governance lies in how effectively it listens to people’s voices, addresses their everyday concerns, removes barriers to a dignified life, promotes better health and enhances the overall happiness and well-being of its citizens.
(The author is a retired bureaucrat)
