The proposed budget has mentioned that as part of its ongoing reforms, pro-poor and gender-budgeting approach have been triggered along with MTBF, allowing an opportunity to measure poverty and gender-sensitivity inherent in each of the objectives of medium-term strategic plan. As a result, the budget has been able to specifically mention that gender equality expenditures altogether (direct and indirect) currently stands at 22% of the total budget, and by next year this share will be increased to 24%. While the introduction of such modalities/approaches to ensure gender parity in each allocation is more than appreciable, there is a need to introduce strong monitoring system to ensure that these new features are being implemented properly and are sustained to further the causes of gender equality and women's human rights. Most importantly, rather than keeping 'women development' under the head of social empowerment and safety net, it should have been considered as an overall goal (like poverty alleviation) of the national budget. A national commission led by gender experts and women's rights activists can be formed to ensure regular monitoring of gender-sensitive budgeting process.

In the budget for FY 2007-08, some positive initiatives have been taken for women. For example, "Maternity allowance for poor lactating mothers" will be a huge support to 45000 poor lactating mothers from 3000 unions receiving Tk.300 per month. A total of Tk17 crore will be spent for this purpose. But our observation is - there is a need to limit the number of children in order to discourage frequent childbirths. For example, maternity leave is accepted only twice in a lifetime for a working mother. The government also needs to specify whether this allowance will be given to pregnant or lactating mothers or both. However, considering existing poor emergency obstetric care (EOC) facilities for safe birth delivery in the rural areas, the budget should have provided some extra allocations. Bangladesh's maternal death rate is still one of the highest in the world. We should not forget that in addition to women's reproductive healthcare rights, their general health rights are also nowhere near expectation.

For that, women should be given more advantage in disease detection (e.g. TB) and treatment programmes through an increased allocation.

Allowance for the widowed and destitute women has increased to Tk220 from Tk200 per month with an increased coverage of 7.5 lakh than last year's 6.5 lakh women. In the past, there were reports of widespread irregularities in the distribution of such allowances. To prevent this, women representatives of the local government can be involved in the selection and distribution processes of such allowances.

Tk100 crore is proposed for the Small and Medium Entrepreneurship Foundation to foster small- and medium-range industrial/entrepreneurial activities. But there is no separate mentioning of women as equal beneficiaries to this initiative. Women have already achieved success in small entrepreneurship ventures. Now it's time to capitalise on that through widening loan and technical supports for women.

Tk550 crore has been allocated for employment generation of the rural poor families. This is in addition to the ministry-based employment generation programmes and will particularly help hard-core poor women to survive, especially during the lean agricultural seasons like monga. Moreover, the programme taken under the "Rural Employment Opportunities for Protection of Public Property" will also help create employment opportunities for 24000 destitute women in 387 unions. If properly implemented, these initiatives will significantly help achieve our national targets in poverty alleviation.

The government has decided to appoint 15000 new primary school teachers, of whom 60% will be women. The decisions to provide training to 10000 teachers and construct 18,186 new classrooms are expected to benefit women along with men. In the same way, women will also be benefited from the decision to provide income-generating training to 600000 newly literate persons (products of mass literacy), since around 50% of these literates are women. Technological and higher education has been duly emphasised, but given their socio-economic constraints women's access to these opportunities should have been outlined separately. Besides, other than teachers' training and construction of new classrooms, there should have been further measures taken to improve the quality of education (e.g. introducing gender-sensitive, real life education curriculum etc.) at primary and secondary levels so that girls can make the best use of what they have learnt in schools even if they drop out early.

In the pre-budget discussions, another important recommendation made by Steps was to recognize women's silent but immense contribution in the agriculture sector. Despite women's traditional huge roles in agriculture, there have not been any women-focused agricultural projects taken so far. In the budget for FY2007-08, Tk.350 crore is proposed for agricultural research. But we would like to recommend that women-friendly agricultural tools be a part of that research. Such an initiative can also significantly contribute to improving rural livelihood standards and poverty reduction. Besides, Tk6350 crore has been allocated for distribution as agricultural credit, but it did not mention how many of the credit-receivers will be women.

With a view to strengthening local government and rural development, in the next fiscal year, government has a plan to train local government representatives, but there needs to be a special focus to include women members in these training. This is vital to helping local women representatives capitalise on their past experience learning. Women in Bangladesh have already crossed a significant distance towards participation in the governance process.

For garments workers' welfare and efficiency-enhancement, the budget has proposed Tk 20 crore and Tk 25 crore respectively. This has been in accordance with the recommendations made by different workers' rights groups as well as Steps. However, since more than 80% of the garments workers are women, we expect that women's share in these programmes are duly guaranteed. Considering women's mobility constraints and harassment in public places, budget could make some allocations for separate transport and housing facilities for female garments workers and other working women.

Training for the members of police department has been prescribed. But whether the training will include gender or not is our area of concern in this regard. A gender-sensitive law-enforcing agency is very important to reduce violence against women, a number one concern for Bangladesh.

The budget has allocated Tk10 crore for the acid-burnt and disabled women. Violence against women (VAW) has been a major obstacle to our national development. In order to prevent this, different national and international instruments like national women's advancement policy, CEDAW, Beijing PFA have strongly recommended appropriate measures to reform or enact laws, to improve legal-judicial mechanism to enhance the rate of remedy. With that in mind, according to the requisite number of VAW cases, budget allocation will have to be increased manifolds. In the same way, allocations should have been made for creating awareness about VAW, expanding legal education and enhancing treatment and rehabilitation programmes etc.

The government has rightly pointed out that an increased allocation for women's development and widened safety-net programmes will contribute significantly to reducing existing gender inequalities in the society. The direct allocations made for women's development and expansion of the coverage of social safety net programmes for the poor, disadvantaged and children, will in many regards benefit women. For example, women will be benefited from the decision to provide income-generating training to 600,000 newly literate persons (products of mass literacy), since around 50% of these literates are women. On the other hand, the 2007-08 budget proposes to increase the allowance for the senior persons from Tk.200 to Tk.220 with the number of beneficiaries increasing from 16 to 17 lakh. Allocations in child development programmes, including day care centres for the children of low-income families will not only benefit many girl children, but their mothers will also get some relief.

However, we do believe and would like to repeat that mere allocation through the safety nets is never close to what we really need to ensure gender equality. Women's issues and concerns should be paid attention to in each and every sector in the budget. In such cases, the Ministry of Women and Children Affairs could play a facilitative role to recommend women-friendly initiatives and allocations for every ministry. For example, the budget for transportation sector should have paid special attention to improving women-friendly transportation system.

Above all, it needs to be mentioned that gender budgeting is not something that can be achieved overnight and it requires continuous thinking, practice and monitoring. While we are at present taking help from the experiences of other countries, there is a need to adjust or modify those from our own national perspectives. The civil society and women and human rights groups and organisations have to play a strong and continuous monitoring role along with the government. Similarly, without an effective implementation system, it will be hard to ensure gender-sensitivity in the national budget. Those who are involved with the implementation process should have a clear guideline to consider women's special needs and vulnerabilities while implementing projects/programmes. It will also be useful to introduce a mechanism to measure and monitor expected gender implications in implementing the allocations in different areas. To conclude, it will be worthwhile to make an appeal to the government to pay attention to these as well as other concerns raised by various organisations and individuals, at least in the next budgets.

The writer is Executive Director of Steps Towards Development, an NGO.