Kerala’s Gender Budget 2025: A Regressive Turn in Rhetoric and Allocation

Kerala’s gender budgeting policy, since its inception in 2017–2018, has generally exhibited incremental expansion, positioning the state as one of the notable gender budgeting states. However, the Gender Budget 2025 marks a departure from this trajectory, with allocations declining for the first time. This reversal raises important concerns about the fiscal priorities of the state’s gender budgeting. Despite nearly a decade of implementation, persistent issues such as the dilution of women-exclusive schemata, static funding for flagship programmes like Kudumbashree and a continued emphasis on welfare over empowerment remain. This research note argues that Kerala’s gender budgeting remains narrowly focused on practical gender needs, with limited movement towards strategic and transformative gender needs. By situating these trends and critiques within broader trends in Union Gender Budgeting, the note calls for recalibrating the policy to align with the objectives of gender mainstreaming.