Daily Times

Pakistan’s population comprises nearly 50 per cent of females. Access to and control over resources, eligibility for rights, and power-sharing equation remain unequally distributed between men and women in Pakistani society, and still, women are discriminated against to a great extent, in all sectors of life, whether public, private or in a community environment; furthermore, men have greater authority and a higher quality of life than women. While according to the Global Gender Gap Index, Pakistan was the world’s second most unequal country in terms of gender equality. Currently, Pakistan is ranked fourth-worst in the world in terms of gender parity, trailing only Iraq, Yemen, and Afghanistan. Pakistan is rated 153rd out of 156 nations on the gender parity index, according to the World Economic Forum’s “Global Gender Gap Report 2021.” Pakistan’s parliament currently has only 21 per cent female members. If sixty reserved seats are not taken into account, female representation in the National Assembly of Pakistan is only around three per cent of the total.

Certain initiatives have been implemented to close the gender gap between men and women in all public spheres, including education, political systems, sociocultural, and economic spheres.

The budget is the most important policy tool of the government because the government cannot successfully implement any policy without money. In terms of budget, Gender Responsive Budgeting is one of the most important approaches to incorporating gender awareness into the policies, planning processes, and programmes of all public entities. Gender Responsive Budgeting is the process of incorporating the gender perspective into all stages of the budgeting process. Gender-responsive budgeting examines the disparities in the effects of government policies including the policies of spending and revenue on women, as well as men. Gender-responsive budgeting, in addition to the impact analysis, proposes a reprioritization of expenditures and income that takes into account the various needs and objectives of men and women. Other aspects of inequality, such as age, religion, ethnic affiliation, rural/urban or any regional locality may also be focused on depending on the country-specific situation.

The government of Khyber Pakhtunkhwa believes that education remains one of the core pillars to empower women and female-headed households.

GRBs can contribute to better economic governance and financial management. They can inform the government about whether it is meeting the needs of various groups of women, men, girls, boys, and transgender people. Examining budgets through a gender lens provides information that can be used to make better public finance decisions in the pursuit of gender equality and inclusive governance.

They promote openness, accountability, and participation. In 1984, Australia was the first country to implement Gender Responsive Budgeting, Canada came next in 1993, followed by South Africa in 1995. In Pakistan, in 2005, the government made Gender Responsive Budgeting necessary in government activities in order to assist minimize gender imbalances and achieve the objectives of developing skills in budget preparation, its review, and analysis utilizing a gender lens; promoting gender-conscious policy and resource allocation; and improving the government’s and civil society organizations’ lobbying skills for gender budgeting. The 2005-07 initiative was a test run as part of the Medium-Term Development Framework, after which further measures were implemented over time. Following that, the federal government worked on a gender-disaggregated analysis and a gender-responsive budget review, which resulted in a baseline to promote gender equality in education and labour force participation with scope to its application at the province level.

Women’s empowerment has always been a priority for the PTI government, and gender-responsive budgeting’s potential to minimize gender gaps in all sectors is being unlocked. The government’s commitment to undertake GRBs in all sectors through each department, as well as the associated education and training, resulted in considerable changes in government budget processes and official behaviour. It also aided in the reduction of gender inequities by prioritizing the establishment and up-gradation of girls’ schools and providing stipends to girls and women for continuing their education which increased girls’ attendance.

To ensure gender equality, Ehsaas’ conditional cash transfer programmes provide cash stipends for education and nutrition that are specifically geared in favour of girls. The PTI government also instituted a ‘Graduation Stipend’ for girls who completed primary school under the Ehsaas umbrella.

Increased spending on women’s specialized budget expenditures was a crucial result of governments’ gender-responsive budgeting. A gendered study of federal and provincial budgets can reveal that women’s specialized budget spending has increased dramatically.

In this wake the government has taken initiatives to capacitate women of the province, especially focusing on the development of an integrated and comprehensive social protection system for the women of Khyber Pakhtunkhwa, in addition to human resource building and focusing on education. In the provincial budget of 2021-22, the department of social welfare was allocated funds to uplift the economic standing of women in the province; a 25 per cent quota in Akhuwat was allocated for

women in Rs. 1 billion funds to be disbursed by Akhuwat SIDB.

The government of Khyber Pakhtunkhwa also believes that education remains one of the core pillars to empower women and female-headed households. Hence, in the previous budget, special focus and allocations had been diverted towards female education-centric projects, some examples in this regard are; Girls’ cadet college in Mardan was allocated a total of Rs 2.5 billion out of which Rs 1.25 billion, Girls stipend allocation worth Rs 2.4 billion through the Elementary and Secondary Education department, functionalization of ‘Girls Community Schools through elementary and secondary education funds with a total allocation of Rs 800 million and functionalization of the 105 Dastkari Centers in Khyber Pakhtunkhwa is currently in progress. A budget of 200 million was allocated for strengthening the existing and establishing new DarulAmans across the province.

Additionally, the Bank of Khyber extended finances to women dairy farmers at concessional rates, for the purchase of Dairy Animals, with the objective to empower rural women and create job opportunities for them.

The Khyber Pakhtunkhwa Women Parliamentary Caucus in collaboration with different stakeholders has been dedicatedly working to gender sensitizing the provincial budgets. Together with reviewing the allocations in the preceding year’s budgets and their implementation, the upcoming budget is reviewed and gender-responsive proposals are drafted. These deliberated efforts with respect to gender-responsive budget proposals, prepared every year, enhance the positive impact of the provincial budgets and also contribute to the country’s efforts in meeting its obligations under the Convention on the Elimination of All Forms of Discrimination Against Women and the targets under Sustainable Development Goals.

Napoleon Bonaparte says that “give me an educated mother I will give you an educated nation”. The PTI government in Khyber Pakhtunkhwa has again put forth a concerted effort with special budgetary allocation in the Provincial Budget 2022-23 to encourage young women to get an education and this investment will indirectly reward our society with a civilized future generation. 2.4 billion rupees have been budgeted for monthly stipends. 2400 million rupees have been budgeted for women’s share in BoK SAAF (collateral-free) and RAAST (collateral-based) financing for SMEs. 500 million rupees have been allocated for indoor game facilities in divisional headquarters for women. Where rupees 344 million is allocated for Women’s Universities, 85 million rupees are allocated for Women’s Skill Development Centers. A sum of 100 million rupees has been budgeted for Women’s Empowerment, whereas 50 million rupees have been allocated for the protection of women. It has been proposed in the current budget that Day care centres will be established in MTI Hospitals, Whereas Women’s crisis centres will be established in Peshawar as well as Women’s Business Park. 1.5 billion have been allocated to initiate the ambulance service for Maternal and Child health.

It is imperative that policymakers and stakeholders be made aware of the gender viewpoint in order for policies to be designed in a gender-sensitive way. Moreover, all the budgetary allocations and programmes promised should be prioritized while they enter their implementation phase. This approach must be implemented at all levels of government as well as in relevant agencies. Parliamentarians, across the country irrespective of party affiliation, (now while they debate on the budget and in future), should also advocate and urge the governments in federal as well as provinces to include a “Gender Budget Statement” in the Budget Documents of their current budgets, highlighting the funds set aside to ensure that public resource collection and allocation is done in a way that is efficient and contributes to gender equality and women’s empowerment.

The writer is a sitting Pakistan Tehreek-e-Insaf member of the Khyber Pakhtunkhwa Assembly. She can be reached
at sumerashams3@gmail.com and tweets @SumeraShams.