Seema P. Salgaonkar & Akbar Gaded
Women are the backbone of any civilisation. They sustain families, communities, and economies, and yet their contributions remain invisible. They continue to carry the burden of unpaid care work and struggle for better education and healthcare. Even though there is growing recognition that women are an important component of society, and that there has to be financial allocation for women’s empowerment, the axe usually falls on schemes that are women-specific in times of financial crunch.
To check these tendencies, there is a fiscal strategy known as Gender Responsive Budgeting (GRB). GRB is a fiscal tool to integrate a gender perspective into government planning and budgeting to ensure that public resources address the specific needs of women. GRB has gained momentum across nations, as it seeks to align financial decisions with the goal of inclusive and equitable development. As per UN Women, over 90 countries worldwide have adopted Gender Responsive Budgeting to align fiscal policies with gender equality goals.
In India, the Ninth Five-Year Plan (1997-2002) marked an important shift in thinking. The Women’s Component Plan mandated that at least 30 percent of funds in key sectors be directed towards women. This approach was further institutionalised in 2005 with the introduction of the Gender Budget Statement (GBS), bringing greater structure and visibility to gender-focused allocations.
Building on these policy shifts, different states in India have translated gender responsive budgeting into targeted interventions, trying to align financial priorities with women’s needs. Against this broader national backdrop, Goa’s entry into gender budgeting is relatively recent, making it important to assess how far the state has progressed.
GRB was introduced in Goa in 2024-25, covering 13 departments with a 7.5 percent allocation of its total budget. It was expanded to 39 departments in the year 2025-26 with an allocation of 17.4 percent of its Rs 30,195 crore total budget outlay, and this year, 2026-27, it includes 56 departments, with an allocation of 17.71 percent of its total budget outlay.
GRB in Goa follows a three-part classification. Part A includes 100 percent gender-specific programmes exclusively targeting women and girls. Part B covers 30 to 99 percent gender-sensitive expenditure. Part C includes initiatives with less than 30 percent allocation for women.
Provisions such as ‘SHE Mart’ for women entrepreneurs, the ‘Checked by Doctor’ health drive, and enhanced allocations under the ‘Dayanand Social Security Scheme’ (Rs 479 crore) and ‘Griha Aadhar’ (Rs 330 crore) show that the state is moving towards a greater focus on women’s welfare, livelihoods, and health.
However, a closer examination reveals discrepancies in how the GRB is formulated. Various departments are reflecting a large number of women beneficiaries. However, a significant share of reported women beneficiaries falls within general schemes that are not specifically designed for women. For example, departments have reported women beneficiaries under basic civic and institutional infrastructure such as renovation of washrooms, installation of CCTV cameras for safety, beach cleaning, street lighting, sanitation, and water supply.
While these are essential services and women do benefit from them, it is by virtue of being general citizens and not as women per se. Services such as water, sanitation, education, and healthcare are essential public goods provided to all citizens, and it cannot be assumed that women have benefited simply because they are women.
This raises an important question: can the provision of basic facilities, without targeted interventions, truly lead to women’s empowerment?
The second major question is how these women beneficiaries have been counted. For instance, departments which have installed sanitary napkin vending machines in various government offices show all the women employees from these offices as beneficiaries. But is there a record of how often there has been regular maintenance, restocking, or usage tracking? In the absence of reliable records, it remains unclear how the number of women beneficiaries is estimated.
Another important question is how gender-friendly Panchayat budgets in Goa are. Goa has 190 Panchayats, with a minimum of 33 percent of the posts of Panchas reserved for women. A few women Sarpanchas were interviewed since they directly engage with local budgeting and service delivery.
The Sarpanchs pointed to the constraints they face despite holding leadership positions. Panchayats, they noted, largely operate within standardised and non-disaggregated budget structures, which limits their ability to address women’s specific needs. They welcomed the state’s initiative on gender budgeting and were hopeful of implementing GRB at the Panchayat level in the near future.
It was also observed that these Sarpanchs mobilise resources through CSR support, NGO collaborations, and community networks, moving beyond financial budgets. This reflects the meaningful role decentralised governance can play in advancing gender-responsive outcomes, especially when women occupy leadership positions.
These insights point to an important reality. While Goa has made notable progress, GRB now needs to move to the next stage. The way forward could be to allocate a higher percentage of funds to Part A of GRB, which includes 100 percent gender-specific programmes, and to integrate gender budgeting at the Panchayat level, as has been done in states such as Kerala and Karnataka.
Secondly, data needs to move beyond simply counting beneficiaries and should be complemented with outcome-based indicators such as improvements in health access, income levels, and participation in decision-making. This shift would help capture the real impact of policies rather than their assumed reach.
True gender budgeting requires recognising and addressing the distinct barriers women face. Only when better measurement is matched with effective delivery can gender budgeting move beyond intent and begin to address the everyday realities of women.
(The writers are faculty of
Political Science, Government
College, Khandola)
