Gender Responsive Budgeting for Indian Cities: The Case of Bhopal and Pune

Women contribute significantly to the prosperity of cities through their paid and unpaid labour. However, limited or lack of access to essential infrastructure services such as water and sanitation, restricted mobility, tenure security and so on increase their burden of unpaid care work, thereby aggravating gender-based disadvantage and resulting in ‘time poverty’, which is largely overlooked by policymakers. This article assesses whether metropolitan cities of India, Bhopal and Pune have integrated a gendered perspective in their development using the gender responsive budgeting (GRB) tool from the expenditure side. Using Maxine Molyneux’s conceptualization of ‘strategic gender needs’ and ‘practical gender needs’, the article develops gender-sensitive indicators to assess progress on four categories of urban infrastructure: water supply, sanitation, housing and public transport. It then uses the benefit incidence analysis (BIA) of public expenditure tool to arrive at expenditure benefits reaching women in both cities. This article is as much a methodological contribution as budget analysis.