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Gender Budget and Care Economy
Context:
The Union Budget for 2025 has allocated a record ₹4,49,028.68 crore to the Gender Budget (GB), reflecting a 37.3% increase from FY24 and accounting for 8.86% of the total Budget.
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- This substantial rise is largely attributed to the inclusion of the PM Garib Kalyan Anna Yojana, which constitutes 24% of the GB, rather than significant investments in care infrastructure or new gender-responsive initiatives.
- Despite the increase, the lack of targeted investment in care infrastructure underscores the continued neglect of care work in India’s economic planning.
- While the Economic Surveys of 2023-24 and 2024-25 highlight the importance of care infrastructure for women’s empowerment, the Budget fails to translate this recognition into concrete financial commitments to strengthen India’s care economy.
Burden of Unpaid Care Work
- UCDW: Globally, women spend an average of 17.8% of their time on unpaid care and domestic work (UCDW), with those in the Global South carrying a disproportionately higher burden.
- Indian women, in particular, shoulder 40% more of this workload than their counterparts in South Africa and China.
- According to the International Labour Organisation, 53% of Indian women remain outside the labour force due to caregiving responsibilities, compared to just 1.1% of men, highlighting deep-seated gender inequalities.
- Greater Burden: For women from low-income and marginalised communities, this burden is even greater, often requiring them to juggle 17–19 hours of daily work between paid and unpaid responsibilities.
- This exacerbates ‘time poverty,’ severely affecting their well-being and economic opportunities.
- Feminist economists from the Global South emphasise that unpaid work in these regions extends beyond household caregiving to include agricultural labour, water and fuel collection, and sanitation-related tasks.
- Limited access to essential infrastructure forces women to spend up to 73% of their time on unpaid work, with water collection alone consuming nearly five hours daily, compared to 1.5 hours for men.
- Climate change is expected to further aggravate these challenges, with water-related unpaid labour in India projected to reach $1.4 billion by 2050 under high-emission scenarios.
Policy Recommendations: Recognising and Addressing Care Work
The Economic Survey 2023-24 suggests that public investment equivalent to 2% of GDP could create 11 million jobs while reducing the care burden. Applying an expanded ‘Three R’ framework—Recognise, Reduce, Redistribute, and Represent—can make policies more effective and transformative.
- Recognising Unpaid Care Work: India’s 2019 Time Use Survey was a critical step in acknowledging the extent of unpaid care work, revealing that women spend an average of seven hours daily on UCDW.
- However, the high cost of conducting these surveys limits their implementation.
- Integrating time-use modules into existing household surveys could provide a more feasible solution.
- Reducing the Burden of UCDW: Expanding access to time-saving infrastructure and affordable caregiving services is essential.
- The government has extended the Jal Jeevan Mission (JJM) until 2028 to ensure 100% potable water coverage.
- However, delays in funding and underutilisation hinder its progress.
- While the scheme’s Budget declined by 4.51% from last year’s estimates, it saw a 195% increase in revised estimates, reflecting allocation-spending mismatches.
- Strengthening implementation and sustainability measures for JJM is crucial to reducing the time women spend on water collection.
- Enhancing childcare centers, eldercare facilities, and assistive technologies would significantly alleviate women’s care burdens and boost their workforce participation.
- Redistributing Care Work: Shifting caregiving responsibilities from the home to the State and within households is vital.
- The newly announced ₹1 lakh crore Urban Challenge Fund, with ₹10,000 crore allocated for FY 2025-26, presents an opportunity to address these issues.
- By financing up to 25% of bankable projects, the fund encourages private and public sector participation in urban redevelopment, water, and sanitation projects.
- This initiative could be leveraged to scale up care infrastructure models piloted under the Smart Cities Mission.
- Ensuring Women’s Representation in Policy-Making: Women’s participation in decision-making processes is essential for crafting gender-transformative policies.
- Excluding them results in policies that fail to reflect their lived realities.
- Research suggests that women’s involvement in governance enhances policy effectiveness significantly, sometimes by six to seven times.
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The Source’s Authority and Ownership of the Article is Claimed By THE STUDY IAS BY MANIKANT SINGH
