Hello, hope you had a great week. This week’s newsletter discusses the importance of the gender budgeting act in India & Japan’s late Prime Minister Shinzo Abe’s major reforms to support the economy and women empowerment.
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Time for a Gender Budgeting Act?
Niti Aayog's Development Monitoring and Evaluation Office (DMEO) has recently made a push for a Gender Budgeting Act. The aim is to incentivise women to participate in training and capacity-building programmes to help India achieve gender equality.
Here, we look into the reasons why gender budgeting needs a push into aspects of governance.
Women in the workforce
As per Bloomberg, 90% of Indian women are out of the workforce and the pandemic has made the employment ratio much worse. The labour force shrank by 14% for women versus 1% for men between December 2019 and December 2020, as per Centre for Monitoring Indian Economy (CMIE) data.
Existing schemes need to be gender-responsive
The existing schemes of the Government of India need to be more gender-responsive. For instance, even after having a provision of 50 % participation of women in MNREGA, the policy fails to address socio-cultural barriers that keep women at bay from participation. Moreover, the participation of women in MNREGA has declined to a five-year low of 53.07% in 2020-21
The yearly budget allocation to the gender budget
While assessing the last 16 years of the budget allocation under gender-responsive budgeting, the budget has remained below 5% of the total expenditure budget, and below 1% of gross domestic product (GDP).
Infact, following the pandemic, the Gender Budget 2021-22 has shrunk by 26%, from Rs 2,07,261 crore in 2020-21 to Rs 1,53,326 crore in 2021-22.
Global Gender Gap index and what it says about India?
Recently, the World Economic Forum released the Global Gender Gap Index for 2022. India ranked the lowest at 135th place in terms of gender parity. Additionally, the score also declined in political, health and survival aspects.
(Sources: Indiaspend, Indian Express, CMIE, Economic Times)
Shinzo Abe’s Achievements: Major Reforms
Former Prime Minister of Japan, Shinzo Abe, the longest-serving leader was shot on 8th July 2022. During his time as a leader, he brought some significant reforms that supported Japan’s economy to grow in diversity and longevity.
Below are the two of his concepts which are still guiding the country’s policy system and structure:
Womenomics
During the 1990s, female labour participation in Japan was the lowest among the developing countries. However, it is now even higher (67%) than the U.S (over 57%). To achieve this, and kickstart Japan’s economy, Abe developed and adopted “womenomics.”
Womenomics as a concept is linked with the advancement of women in the workplace and their contribution to the economy. Abe aimed to get women to fill 30 % of leadership positions in Japan by 2020. He worked on assessing the shortages and hurdles that came in between women and the process of joining the workforce.
Abenomics
Japan’s economy was going through a period of stagnation and price deflation from 1991 through 2001. This was also known as “Japan’s Lost Decade”. After this, the economy grew, but at a much slower pace than other industrialized nations.
In 2012, Shinzo Abe became the prime minister of Japan and aimed to revive the economic growth of the country.
For this, Abe launched a strategy called "Abenomics". The policies under Abenomics were structured in a way to deal with the issues at the root like the ageing and shrinking population to enhance the economy. Many market experts were of the view that Abenomics enhanced Japan’s economy even better than many Group of Seven Nations in 2013.