Publication Details
Closing the Gender Gap through National Budget Allocation: A Call for Greater Allocation on Women’s Economic Participation
Veterans Law Articles
Abstract
Bangladesh has made remarkable strides in attaining gender equality through universal education, accessible healthcare facilities, and improved political participation of women at national and local levels. Nevertheless, the progress of the country in attaining gender parity is overshadowed by the dragging progress in women's economic participation. While individual and institutional researchers in many cases identify the crucial factors affecting gender disparity and suggest to allocate more resources for their development, governments usually, allocate national budgets following their own political agenda. However, literature to synchronize these two streams by suggesting need-based reallocation of public resources through the national budget in Bangladesh remains scarce. Hence, using the Global Gender Gap (GGG) Index values developed by the World Economic Forum, this paper first identified the priority sectors for closing the gender equality gaps in Bangladesh in terms of economic participation, education, healthcare, and political participation of women. Later, this article rearranged the gender budgets of all ministries of Bangladesh into the six PESTEL groups (Political, Economic, Social, Technological, Environmental, and Legal) that are usually considered in strategic planning. Following such rearrangement this paper further demonstrates that variations in gender budget allocation on different PESTEL factors by relevant ministries affects women's long-term growth in various priority sectors identified earlier. Finaly, the article identified the ministries where greater allocaton of ministerial budget on women need to be prioritized for accelerating the minimization of gender gap in economic participation.