Value Added Article: Gender Equalisation through Feminist Finance | EPW

Relevance: GS Paper I & II (Local Government / Urbanization)

Source

Women Empowerment


Introduction

Responses across academics and activists to the increasing onslaughts on women’s rights have been many and varied. Yet, what appears to be missing is the macroeconomic fundamentals. This article explores the violation of women’s rights and bodily integrity from a finance angle, or “feminist finance.”


The subjugation of women

  • One, upholding a particular form of household with the woman combining the roles of the chief caregiver as well as “emergency” (but, secondary) earner during times of distress and exigency ensures cheap reproduction of labour power with women as the proverbial reserve army.
  • Two, the subordination of women takes place within the productive and reproductive process through the denial of ownership of land and productive assets, and non-recognition as productive labour.
  • Three, at the macro and meso levels, a corroborating extension occurs where women are termed as “volunteers” in the job market when they are employed as accredited social health activist (ASHA) and aanganwadi workers, and now under new categories called pashu sakhis, bank sakhis, krishi sakhis.
  • Four, a form of household in which women provide unpaid services is supported, and their income-augmenting and saving activities are not recognised.
  • Five, underpaid, unpaid and care work is depended on to fill gaps in public expenditure and “genderless” macroeconomic policies.
  • Six, there is interlocking of production and reproduction at the four fundamental levels through economic and extra-economic structures in the sphere of non-domestic work, in domestic work and motherhood, by socialisation through ideological and cultural practices, beliefs and traditions, and by organisation of private lives and control of sexuality.
  • Seven, women’s interests are suppressed by giving little access to political representation.
  • Eight, oppression and exploitation are reinforced through the lack of response to violence both sexual and “extra-sexual.”

The State as a Non-enabler of women’ rights

  • The state has retracted especially from provisioning of public goods and from its obligation to remove the constraints that exist on the visualisation of women’s contribution to the economy.
  • The latest and most clear illustration of this is the interim budget of the current financial year.
  • The debate on gross domestic product (GDP) attainment figures ignore the contribution of women.
  • There is non-availability of information on employment, especially when women’s work participation rate has been consistently declining, work is being increasingly informalised, and the economy still has to recover from the aftermath of the double whammy of demonetisation and the problematic implementation of the goods and services tax.
  • The attacks on women’s empowerment and their very existence are increasing by the day.
  • Women have been short-changed even in the schemes and allocations applicable specifically to them. Women-exclusive allocations have been reduced.
  • Although the overall allocation for the Pradhan Mantri Matru Vandana Yojana (the erstwhile Indira Gandhi Matritva Sahyog Yojana, 2010) has been doubled from ₹ 1,200 crore, it still stands at a pathetic ₹ 2,500 crore.
  • On the other hand, the interim budget has sought to increase the programme component of the National Nutrition Mission by a paltry ₹ 400 crore.
  • A major challenge today is to increase the involvement of women in visible wage-earning activities, especially by removing constraints on their participation. One such important constraint that has been identified and universally accepted is the care of children. Yet, the allocations to the National Creche Scheme have been enhanced by a mere ₹ 20 crore to ₹ 50 crore.
  • Other such cynical allocations are the much-touted “tripling” of the Working Women Hostel Scheme from ₹ 52 crore to ₹ 165 crore, the ₹ 35 crore rise in the Mahila Shakti Kendra Scheme to ₹ 150 crore, an additional ₹ 10 crore for rescued trafficked women to total a meagre ₹ 30 crore, and another ₹ 7 crore to the total of ₹ 15 crore now for homes for widows.
  • The direct benefit transfer (DBT) for liquid petroleum gas or LPG (PAHAL) was introduced in 2013, with the Pradhan Mantri Ujjwala Yojana (PMUY) being launched in 2016. What is most objectionable is it having been termed as a women’s scheme. The consequence of doing so has resulted not only in the reinforcement of the gender divide by reasserting that only women are responsible for the consumption needs of the household, it also negates the burden faced by single male migrants who perform this task.
  • The support and rehabilitation system for women in distress called the Swadhar Greh Scheme has registered a 47% decline, the scheme for prevention of trafficking and rescue has been halved, the women helpline has witnessed a 38% decline, the Nirbhaya Fund is heavily underspent, more than half of the already meagre allocation to the much touted “beti bachao, beti padhao” and the acid attack victim’s welfare fund is yet to be introduced (CBGA 2019).

Way forward: the feminist finance

  • apply all methods of gender responsive budgeting to all allocations in all ministries and departments;
  • evaluate resource raising and revenue strategies through a feminist finance lens;
  • make the techniques of monitoring and evaluation more sophisticated;
  • enhance the public provisioning of services, especially for the women;
  • decrease user fees while simultaneously increasing subsidies for all public goods, including food, health, education, water, energy, and transport;
  • and evolve and apply gender-disaggregated ratio analysis of access to all public goods.
  • evaluation of all “development” projects through a strong gender lens, and inclusion of indicators like the gender equality attainment scale in the methodology for resource distribution is required.
  • it is necessary to universalize and ensure the social protection to all without conditionalities, including women and men who render massive amounts of unpaid labour in a largely informal economy.
  • the foremost form of exclusion—the Aadhaar card—must be removed.
  • the application of a gender-sensitive choice of commodities under the various rates of the GST, and analysis of the implicit and explicit impacts of prices of essential commodities is required.
  • not just financial equity in resources between different local bodies, but also some standards of equality between local bodies in their performance of providing a minimum standard of the basic services that form their mandate should be considered.
  • the number of females in the 0–6 age group should be included as the basis for determining the relative shares of the states from the divisible pool of resources.
  • the maternal mortality rate, child sex ratio, incidence of crimes against women, etc, should be incorporated into fund formulae.
  • Conditionalities such as the training of elected representatives and staffs should be incorporated in the performance component of the grant for local bodies, with a specific conditionality being the number of elected women representatives trained.
  • To this longlist should be added the need to especially focus on the issues of single women, widening the definition from the basically cultural category of female-headed households to all women and other genders who are out of the macro-patriarchal slot, and who confront labour, life, and livelihoods with all the marginalisation, vulnerability, deprivation, and destitution that accompany “singleness.”
  • There are a large number of additional issues that need to be reperceived and re-examined through the perspective of feminist finance, such as the capital–labour ratios, increase in the profits at the cost of wages, the trade regimes and the international trade in goods and services both globally and regionally, and the trade deficits, balance of payments, exchange rates and the commodity conditionalities.

Conclusion

It is hoped that the assertion that finance through a feminist perspective can function as an equaliser in order to offset the prevailing process of gender de-equalisation is extended and that this debate is deepened so as to enable all genders to claim the public from our republic.


Leave a Reply