ABSTRACT
Gender budgeting in its true sense has to be used for empowering women to build their capabilities so as to make them active economic agents of the society. It is a very strong tool which can be used to promote investments in in higher education, training, provision of resources such as finance, technology, etc. to empower women. Though India is applauded globally for having taken an initiative in gender budgeting relatively early on, in reality the picture is dismal. Not only is the budgetary allocation for gender proportionately reducing over the years, the overall composition of the gender budget shows that women are still looked upon as nurturers and caretakers and not much is done to incorporate them in the mainstream economy. This is particularly worrisome considering the very low gender indicators of India in international comparison.
Keywords
Gender budgeting, Gender budget composition, Women empowerment