Gender budgeting and tribe women: A survey account

Abstract

Gender neutral policies are likely to fail in addressing the inequality issue between men and women in regions with a legacy of unfavourable intra-household and peripheral differences in social, cultural and economic gender relation. This includes all aspects like education, health, employment status, socio-economic freedom and empowerment etc. With these, the intra-household work distribution skewed towards women which is unpaid and often unrecognised deprives the women of making an economic contribution to the national economy by indirectly jeopardising their economic efficiency. So gender budgeting is an approach to sensitise this disparity This paper presents the gender budgeting aspects with a focus on the tribe women of two districts of Odisha i.e., Rayagada and Keonjhar.It points up the existence of some groups in the shadow region of the neutral budget but having an immense economic contribution to their household with no equivalent return. It highlights their plight which the budget fails to address to a notable extent.