CHANDIGARH, March 17, 2008: A One day Workshop on Gender Budges was organized by the Centre for Women’s Studies and Development, Panjab
University at ICSSR Complex today. The them acquired additional significance as it comes at a time when the new budget has been adopted by the National Parliament and there is a lot of debate on what it contains for the different sections of society. The budget being a Policy statement, reflecting the social and economic priorities of the government, it becomes essential to analysis it from a gender perspective. The workshop was attended by over 40 lecturers, senior lecturers and Readers from Panjab University and affiliated colleges.
Inaugurating the workshop, Dr. Anuradha Gupta, Financial Commissioner and Secretary, Department of Women and Child Development, Haryana emphasized that women continue to occupy a low status in society, not withstanding all claims to national development. She highlighted her point through certain revealing statistics such as 70% of the world’s poor are women; out of the 45 million abortions conducted annually at least 20 million are conducted in unsanitary conditions. Subjugation, she emphasized, continues at every step. The solution has to be found in a change in the social market.
The Vice-Chancellor, Prof. R.C. Sobti, presiding over the inaugural session observed that the problems continuing in society today are more due to what we have created rather than through natural causes. He focused on the need for gender budgeting at the family level also, since this is where all discrimination against women begins. He stressed upon the need for women to enter decision-making bodies in order to give a women’s perspective to decision-making.
Prof. B.S. Ghuman, Dean, Faculty of Arts highlighted the multifarious achievements of the Social Science Departments and Faculty in the University. he also introduced the Faculty Improvement Programme launched by this University under which this particular programme is being organized. Earlier, Prof. Aruna Goel, Director Centre for Women’s Studies, welcoming the guests, highlighted that gender budgets do not mean separate budgets for women; rather it refers to an analysis of the actual government’s expenditure and revenue on women as compared to men.
The Resource Persons for this workshop were distinguished faculty from the National Institute of Public Cooperation and Child Development, New Delhi and the Accountant General Officer, Punjab. In three technical session, the participants were given an awareness of what are gender budgets, how to go about doing gender budget analysis; what provisions does the current budget have for women; Gender Needs; Gender Analysis of Policies and Programmes.
The workshop concluded with distribution of certificates to the participants by Prof. S.K. Kulkarni, Dean University Instruction, Panjab University, Chandigarh. According to Prof. Aruna Goel, Director Centre for Women’s Studies, PU.
