As India prepares to present its new budget in the parliament next week, it is crucial to prioritize gender parity as an economic imperative for growth and development. The Global Gender Gap Report 2024 highlights India’s need to address significant gender disparities, ranking 129 out of 146 countries. To bridge the gender gap, a holistic strategy is required, consisting of fiscal, administrative, and regulatory measures, combined with public messaging and mindset changes.

As India strives to become a developed nation, the Global Gender Gap Report 2024 serves as a stark reminder of the country’s need to address the significant gender disparities that hinder its progress. With a population of over 1.4 billion, India’s demographic dividend can only be realized by investing in human capabilities development, particularly in bridging the gender gap. The report’s findings are a call to action for policymakers to prioritize gender parity, recognizing it as an economic imperative for growth and development.

India’s ranking of 129 out of 146 countries in the Global Gender Gap Index, with a score of 64.1%, indicates a slight regression from last year’s ranking of 127. The country’s gender gap in education and political empowerment has widened, while economic participation and opportunity have shown a slight improvement. This mixed bag of results underscores the need for a comprehensive approach to address the root causes of gender disparities.

To bridge the gender gap, India must adopt a holistic gender strategy consisting of fiscal, administrative, and regulatory measures, combined with public messaging and mindset changes. This approach must prioritize education, employment, and entrepreneurship, as well as promote women’s leadership and representation in politics, business, and civil society.

Education: A Critical Step

The education sector presents a significant challenge, with a 17.2 percentage point gap between men and women’s literacy rates, ranking India 124th globally. Closing this gap requires targeted interventions to ensure that girls have equal access to quality education, and that they are encouraged to pursue higher education and career opportunities.

According to a report by the Ministry of Human Resource Development, in 2024, only 27% of girls in rural India enroll in higher education, compared to 43% of boys. One of the significant challenges in bridging the gender gap is the inadequate infrastructure for girls in schools, leading to high dropout rates. In many rural areas, girls lack access to basic amenities such as clean water, sanitation, and transportation to schools, making it difficult for them to continue their education. Moreover, social norms and gender biases often prevent girls from pursuing higher education and career opportunities. 

To address this disparity, the government must increase investment in girls’ education, particularly in rural areas. This includes providing adequate infrastructure, such as separate toilets and sanitation facilities, to ensure that girls have a safe and conducive learning environment. Moreover, targeted interventions are needed to address the root causes of dropout rates, including economic factors, poor quality of education, menstrual hygiene, health-related issues, distance to school, and lack of active parental involvement.

Employment and Entrepreneurship: Empowering Women

The labour force participation rate of women in India stands at 45.9%, significantly lower than that of men. To bridge this gap, it is essential to ensure that girls do not drop out of higher education, acquire job skills, and have access to safe workplaces. Moreover, sharing responsibility for household chores and providing support for women to balance work and family life can help them retain their jobs after marriage. According to a report by the International Labour Organization, in 2024, women in India spend an average of 4.5 hours per day on unpaid care work, compared to 1.5 hours for men. To address this disparity, the government must implement policies that promote flexible work arrangements and provide support for caregivers.

Skill development at the doorstep is also crucial in facilitating empowerment. By providing vocational training and skill development programs in the rural areas, girls and women can acquire job skills and access employment opportunities, thereby increasing their economic participation and independence. Furthermore, even in the existence of right policy interventions, women working in the unorganized sector cannot avail the benefits due to lack of proper documentation, highlighting the need for a more comprehensive approach to address this issue. This approach can help address the significant gap in labor force participation rates between men and women.

Political Empowerment: A Critical Component

Political empowerment remains a significant area of concern, with women’s representation in Parliament dipping to 13.6% in the newly elected Lok Sabha. The Women’s Reservation Bill, 2023, which aims to reserve one-third of the seats in the Lok Sabha and State legislative Assemblies for women, is a step in the right direction. However, its implementation and effectiveness will be crucial in increasing women’s representation in politics. According to a report by the Inter-Parliamentary Union, in 2024, India ranks 144th out of 193 countries in terms of women’s representation in Parliament.

In a country like India with a considerably large heterogeneous population, the dissemination of legislative power would be insufficient to protect the interests of the women. 

Hence, the 73rd Amendment to the Indian Constitution ensured the reservation for women in the Panchayati Raj Institutions. The basic difference in the representation of women at the parliamentary and state assembly level versus at the PRI level is that the former is associated with policy framing while the latter is expected to focus on the equitable distribution of public goods at the grassroots level, keeping in mind the interests of rural women.

Notably, even with 50% of seats reserved for women in Panchayati Raj Institutions, women barely exercise the agency they have due to multifaceted reasons of the society, such as patriarchal norms, lack of education, and limited access to resources, highlighting the need for a more comprehensive approach to empower women in politics. Therefore, it is imperative to make effective interventions to facilitate women leaders at the PRI level, such as capacity-building programs, mentorship initiatives, and support systems, to enable them to overcome these challenges and truly exercise their agency in decision-making. 

Economic Benefits of Gender Parity

To realize its demographic dividend, India must recognize the economic benefits of gender parity. According to the World Economic Forum, closing the gender gap can add $770 billion to India’s GDP by 2025. Moreover, a study by McKinsey estimates that bridging the gender gap in India’s workforce can increase the country’s GDP by 18%. By investing in girls’ education and women’s employment, India can unlock its demographic dividend and drive economic growth.

Remedying through the Gender Budgeting 

Gender budgeting is a vital instrument in the hands of policymakers to ensure that both men and women equally get the benefits of development, thereby supporting gender mainstreaming. It concentrates on gender-based and equality-focused assessment for redistribution of the economic resources. The goal of gender budgeting is to bring in equality by meticulously utilizing the available resources, techniques, and procedures of the budget cycle.

However, despite the introduction of gender budgeting in India in 2005-06, it has still not caught momentum and requires numerous upgrades and reforms. The allocation must be diversified so that it has a wider outreach and impact. Instead of giving ample funds to a single scheme or department, equitable distribution or allocation of funds where it is most required—where women face specific structural barriers that prevent their holistic growth—is the need of the hour.

To make gender budgeting an effective tool, the government should raise awareness and motivate other departments and ministries to participate in it, instead of only 30-35 departments and ministries. It should also curb the problem of underutilization of available funds by addressing and resolving the systemic inadequacies. Each ministry and department should prepare a road map outlining how they aim to address gender-specific needs before going for budgetary allocations.

Targeted Gender Budgeting (TGB) is the way forward, which could lead to better results. Inequality of access to resources is one of the primary reasons for women’s oppression and underdevelopment. Hence, resource allocation, at every level, needs a gender-sensitive approach. In the process of planning, TGB may be used as an assertive feminist strategy with the main objective of reshaping public distribution of resources, with the aim of securing parity between men and women.

In conclusion, bridging the gender gap is critical to India’s development. The government must prioritize gender parity, recognizing it as an economic imperative for growth and development. A holistic gender strategy, combined with effective gender budgeting and targeted gender budgeting, can help create a more inclusive and equitable society, where women and men have equal opportunities to contribute to the country’s growth and prosperity. The upcoming budget is an opportunity for the government to take concrete steps towards bridging the gender gap and unlocking India’s demographic dividend.