Working through the numbers

Gender Agenda Newsletter: Working through the numbers

Earlier this week, I got speaking to R. Sujatha, a Sustainability Development Goals consultant, for mByom, a management consulting firm. The premise of our conversation was gender-based inclusivity and intersectionality in Tamil Nadu. Sujatha had worked with government departments for over 20 years, focussing on women and menstruation.

“I was at a village of scheduled caste (SC) people, where we were asking women about the number of pads they used. The answer stumped me. One woman told me that a neighbouring ‘upper caste’ village had cut off water supply to them. Forget changing pads multiple times a day. They could only bathe once in about two days,” she says.

Such instances have served as major motivators for the creation and sustained focus of gender budget allocations in Tamil Nadu since 2019, says the economist. The latest edition was released by the Tamil Nadu Finance Department on March 15.

Having worked on this year’s policies, Sujatha says that there has been a considerable rise in the gender-based allocations by the education, social welfare, and health department, and that now there is a focus on analysis across schemes and departments. From 2023-24 to 2024-25 there was an 80% increase in solely-women-centred schemes.

A report for 2023-2024 by the Comptroller and Auditor General (CAG) said the lack of a Gender Budget Cell (GBC) in each department had contributed to underutilisation of the budget allocation for women. Sujatha says this is in the process of changing in Tamil Nadu: “We’re not just looking at budget allocation but also budget spend now.”

At the Centre too, there has been the problem of allocation to gender with economic benefits not percolating to women.

This year, some highlights under the budget will make life easier for working women. Thozhi Working Women’s hostel, which currently exists in 13 locations across Tamil Nadu, will see 10 more establishments at a cost of ₹700 crore. Three student hostels will be built, and creches set up at SIPCOT Park, which currently houses approximately 90,000 employees. Shop floors here by industry giants have shop floors entirely run by women.