Gender Agenda Newsletter: Working through the numbers

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.

Although the gender budget by the minorities, SC, ST department hasn’t risen significantly, this year, 10,000 SHGs will be created, particularly for women from marginalised sections. This is besides the historic implementation of the free bus services for women, the first State in India to offer this. Also, 50 trans people will be trained and inducted to the Home Guard Force.

The TN budget is now more inclusive than before. However, further understanding of allocations through disaggregation and steady implementation will make for a more inclusive State.

Wordsworth

Gender mainstreaming: he act of ensuring that all activities, including research, policy development, legislation, and resource allocation, are perceived through a gender lens. This year 12 central Ministries — many from sectors that were not conventionally gender-responsive, such as ports, shipping and waterways, land resources, and pharmaceuticals — have integrated gender budgeting, reflecting a whole government approach.

Toolkit

This year, the Chennai Corporation will release a document on gender inclusive spaces. The World Bank’s Handbook for Gender-inclusive Urban Planning and Design from 2020 was used as research during the drafting process. Urban planning has everything to do with gender. How, you ask? “In general, cities work better for heterosexual, able-bodied, cisgender men than they do for women, girls, sexual and gender minorities, and people with disabilities,” the handbook says. This resource points to gaps. Like the lack of lighting and toilets in public spaces. It traces the history of urban design while also shining light on the need for more gendered participation in drafting and executing policies related to inclusive urban design. Basically, inclusive urban planning is not just about adding ramps. It is about creating safe spaces to inhabit.

Somewhere someone said something stupid

She is a highly educated and liberal woman, and such women often have their own opinions and they question sanskriti and culture. But I have the simplest answer to this. If festivals like Karva Chauth, Ramzan, and Eid, along with the movements of the sun and moon, were included in our daily education system, all these questions would simply disappear.

Rajesh Kumar, actor, on Ratna Pathak Shah’s comments dismissing Karva Chauth.

Women we meet

Jyothi Kalaiselvi began singing when she was 10. Today, she plays a central role in conducting heritage walks held across the city. Most recently, she was part of ‘Pen, Kalai, Kadal’ (Women, Art, Sea), through Marina beach and its nearby areas, predominantly to shine light on women and institutions associated with women, which are often overlooked. Armed with her ukelele, Jyothi began singing ‘Nenjukku needhi’, a song by Tamil freedom fighter Bharatiyar, to an enraptured audience. The song is a call for social justice. For this visually impaired and neurodivergent individual, “Singing helped me settle, even speak when I was a child. It is my way of expression,” she says.