India’s 2026–27 Gender Budget aims to convert rising female labour participation into growth, but fully realising the gender dividend requires holistic investments, structural reforms, and rigorous outcome tracking
India’s Gender Budget for 2026–27 exceeds INR 5 lakh crore for the first time, representing 9.37 percent of the Union Budget. When viewed alongside the Economic Survey 2025–26, it signals an effort to translate recent gains in women’s labour force participation into a sustained driver of growth. Female participation has increased from 23.3 percent in 2017–18 to 41.7 percent in 2023–24, and the Survey projects it could reach 55 percent by 2050, underscoring its macro-critical importance for long-term growth.
Since last year, the budget has been structured in three parts: Part A schemes, exclusively for women, account for INR 1,07,688.42 crore (21.5 percent); Part B, comprising mainstreamed schemes, dominates at INR 3,63,412.37 crore (72.6 percent); and Part C accounts for INR 29,777.94 crore (5.9 percent). Analysing resource allocation across these three parts is crucial to understanding whether the Budget aligns with harnessing the gender dividend to drive India’s long-term growth or whether expenditure remains symbolic.
The largest expansion this year is in water and sanitation, with allocations for the Jal Jeevan Mission rising by 61.3 percent, from INR 20,476 crore to INR 33,023 crore, and combined funding alongside Swachh Bharat Mission (Grameen) reaching INR 35,983 crore.
The largest expansion this year is in water and sanitation, with allocations for the Jal Jeevan Mission rising by 61.3 percent, from INR 20,476 crore to INR 33,023 crore, and combined funding alongside Swachh Bharat Mission (Grameen) reaching INR 35,983 crore. These allocations are essential, as women spend about 305 minutes in unpaid domestic work, much of it linked to water access and caregiving responsibilities. Therefore, expanding household water and sanitation cuts this burden while improving health, freeing time and capacity for paid work and economic participation. However, in 2025–26, the Jal Jeevan Mission allocation fell sharply, from INR 20,476 crore in Budget Estimates to INR 8,306.51 crore in Revised Estimates, before increasing again this year. Such volatility suggests gaps in implementation and raises questions about whether these investments translate into sustained productivity gains.
Rural development anchors the Gender Budget, reflecting a continued focus on women’s livelihoods and enterprise, with Part B allocations of INR 64,130 crore. While the National Social Assistance Programme holds steady at INR 5,668 crore, the gender component of MGNREGA falls from INR 40,937 crore to INR 13,956 crore, offset by the INR 44,506 crore VB-G RAM G scheme. This shifts women from guaranteed wages to market-linked enterprise. Complementary investments in energy through PM Surya Ghar Muft Bijli Yojana at INR 10,560 crore and KUSUM at INR 2,250 crore, alongside expanded SHE Marts and Micro, Small and Medium Enterprises (MSME) allocations rising to INR 3,457.74 crore, aim to strengthen productive capacity. Although data indicate that female-headed establishments rose from 24.2 percent to 26.2 percent between 2021–22 and 2023–24, women continue to dominate agriculture, fisheries, and dairy, where mainstream schemes remain weakly gender-targeted. Without a sharper and more deliberate design, these enterprise investments will yield uneven gains and limited long-term empowerment.
Housing remains a major lever within the Gender Budget across both rural and urban areas. In rural development, Part A allocations total INR 71,775 crore, dominated by PMAY–Gramin at INR 52,575 crore, underscoring housing as a women-centred asset that strengthens security and stability. In urban areas, development continues to receive one of the largest allocations in the Gender Budget, with INR 21,625 crore under the Ministry of Housing and Urban Affairs Part A, primarily for PMAY–Urban and associated interest subsidies. These allocations signal a sustained emphasis on women’s housing as a platform for dignity, access to services, and greater household-level bargaining power. They also directly address a constraint highlighted in the Economic Survey, which identifies the lack of affordable housing as a structural barrier limiting women’s economic participation. However, revisions indicate absorption risks, with housing-related heads experiencing sharp BE-to-RE compression in 2025–26, which weakens the signalling value of larger outlays.
Housing remains a major lever within the Gender Budget across both rural and urban areas.
Health and Nutrition: The largest component of the Gender Budget remains food subsidies under the Pradhan Mantri Garib Kalyan Anna Yojana at INR 108,915.75 crore, nearly 22 percent of total allocations. This positions food security as the foundational layer of women’s wellbeing. Funding for Saksham Anganwadi and POSHAN 2.0 rises to INR 18,580 crore, while gender-tagged health spending reaches INR 40,027.85 crore, signalling continued prioritisation of nutrition and primary health systems. However, the scale of allocations must be considered alongside the depth of health deficits: 57 percent of women aged 15–49 are anaemic, anaemia among adolescent girls is 59.1 percent, and 18.7 percent of women are underweight. Poor nutritional outcomes constrain educational attainment, workforce participation, and long-term earnings potential; health, therefore, remains a foundational pillar of human capital. Incremental increases may sustain existing programmes, but without sharper outcome targeting and improved delivery efficiency, they pose an additional risk to women’s economic participation and wellbeing.
The Budget signals a structural push to strengthen women’s access to higher education, particularly in STEM, with plans to establish girls’ hostels in every district. These measures aim to reduce mobility and safety constraints while aligning education with employment clusters. The emphasis responds to India’s persistent ‘leaky pipeline’, where, although women constitute 43 percent of STEM graduates, they account for only 14 percent of the STEM workforce. The Economic Survey reinforces this concern, noting both lower female progression into STEM fields and the underutilisation of advanced qualifications: women aged 25 and above holding advanced degrees comprise only 2.9 percent of the employed female workforce. However, reductions in allocations to key research institutions and the gender-tagged outlay for the India AI Mission, which falls from INR 660 crore to INR 150 crore, risk weakening pathways at the frontier of emerging technologies. Expanding access addresses entry barriers, but sustaining participation will require stronger retention mechanisms, research funding, and institutional support across the full skills continuum.
The Budget signals a structural push to strengthen women’s access to higher education, particularly in STEM, with plans to establish girls’ hostels in every district.
The Budget recognises the care economy as a driver of women’s workforce participation, particularly in health, with plans to train 1.5 lakh multi-skilled caregivers and 1 lakh allied health professionals over five years. The Skill India Programme rises from INR 600 crore to INR 840 crore and anchors this effort, while the Development of Nursing Services remains flat at INR 25.88 crore. The Flexible Pool for RCH and Health System Strengthening, which funds frontline health workers and community care systems, has increased to INR 19,835.88 crore. These measures represent a step forward, though the scale of funding will need to rise meaningfully to formalise the vision. The Economic Survey’s reading of the Time Use Survey is instructive, linking the heavy unpaid work burden to women’s inclination towards flexible work models and reiterating the need for better care infrastructure, including childcare facilities and crèches, alongside flexible work policies and industry-aligned skills. This reinforces that care is both a sector for job creation and a binding constraint on women’s ability to take up and retain paid work.
Allocations alone cannot unlock gender dividends if outcomes are not tracked through gender-disaggregated data. This becomes more critical as Part B expands and spending flows through large mainstream programmes. Implementing the Gender Budgeting Act, as recommended by NITI Aayog, and institutionalising gender budgeting across ministries and states, with the mandatory collection and publication of outcome indicators, would strengthen accountability and enable evidence-driven adjustments. At the same time, monitoring BE-to-RE slippages across individual schemes can provide early insight into implementation bottlenecks and highlight areas requiring corrective action.
Allocations alone cannot unlock gender dividends if outcomes are not tracked through gender-disaggregated data.
Realising the gender dividend requires a holistic approach rather than piecemeal investments. Skills development, livelihoods, and enterprise support must be complemented by interventions that remove structural barriers such as mobility constraints, care responsibilities, and limited access to digital tools. Women in agriculture, fisheries, and dairy require secure access to resources such as land, credit, and inputs, without which productivity, yields, and broader economic outcomes suffer. Cross-cutting priorities such as climate resilience, safety, and security must also be systematically integrated. Lastly, fully harnessing the gender dividend requires expanding the definition of gender beyond women, ensuring that the capabilities, labour participation, and enterprise of transgender and non-binary persons are recognised and supported. Addressing these factors in an integrated manner is essential for India to fully realise its gender dividend.
Sharon Sarah Thawaney is the Executive Assistant to the Vice President (Development Studies), Nilanjan Ghosh, at the Observer Research Foundation.
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Sharon Sarah Thawaney is the Executive Assistant to the Director - ORF Kolkata and CNED, Dr. Nilanjan Ghosh. She holds a Master of Social Work ...
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