India

In 2024, India achieved a notable milestone with the government's gender budget crossing 1% of India's GDP for the first time. The government budget for women empowerment schemes increased substantially by 37.3% from the previous year, totalling approximately USD 38 billion across sectors. The proportion of the gender budget increased to 6.8% in 2024, the highest in two decades of India's gender budgeting journey. Gender budgets of unconventional Ministries such as Drinking Water and Sanitation and New and Renewable Energy have introduced new women-specific schemes while Ministries of Power and Civil Aviation allocated budgets for women for the first time. Increasing investment in women and girls leads to tangible improvements in their lives by intentionally allocating financial resources to address their practical, socio-economic and educational needs. For example, Department of Drinking Water and Sanitation�s first time gender budget allocation of USD 3.9 billion provided safe drinking water tap connections to 148 million rural households in 2024. This resulted in 28 million more rural households accessing safe drinking water, then 2023, contributing to reduced drudgery of women through time and efforts saved in water collection. UN Women's gender-responsive budgeting programme was an enabler to integrate gender analysis in the budget-making process. UN Women's technical advisory and capacity-building support to the Ministry of Women and Child Development and through them to line ministries resulted in increased capacities of government officials to analyse gender gaps and areas for improved investment to bridge gender gaps. Improved use of gender-disaggregated data for analysing gender gaps and budget making, facilitated by UN Women, contributed to strengthened skills of government officials to measure and track actual spending on gender-responsive programmes and schemes. Examples range from advocacy with the Police for allocating budgets for women's facilities in the armed forces to Micro, Small and Medium Enterprises analysing budgets in entrepreneurship and employment generation programmes to identify benefits and fund flow towards women. This result contributes to SDG 1 indicator 1.b.1:?Proportion of government recurrent and capital spending to sectors that disproportionately benefit women, the poor and vulnerable groups; and SDG 5 indicator 5.c.1: Proportion of countries with systems to track and make public allocations for gender equality and women�s empowerment. The result showcases the Government of India�s?commitment towards financing for gender equality as one of the key strategies to deliver on SDG 5 commitments and?realizing its vision of �Women-led Development'

ICO provided technical support to the Government of India, as a part of India�s G20 Presidency. ICO partnered with the G20 secretariat and supported working groups and initiatives under G20. ICO was a technical partner with the Ministry of WCD to support the Govt.'s mainstreaming of GEWE, by placing a team of policy and technical consultants in the ministry to this end. ICO co-supported with UNCDF, a technical specialist in the Ministry of Finance, to support GOI�s endeavours on women�s access to finance. The New Delhi Leaders' Declaration, included unequivocal commitment to advancing gender equality and women's empowerment across key parameters, including education (particularly science, technology, engineering and mathematics (STEM)), emerging digital technologies, women's entrepreneurship, labour force participation, gender pay gap, care infrastructure, gender-based violence, workplace safety, and financial inclusion. When implemented these actions will contribute towards achieving women's leading dignified lives in India. The commitments agreed upon by the Heads of States of the G20 countries would be used for national policy and advocacy work in line with the UNSDCF. The Prime Minister embedded GEWE in India�s G20 tracks by declaring �Women-led Development� as a priority theme. As a result, ICO supported gender integration in- Business20, Women20, G20Empower, Startup20, Tourism and Urban20 (SDG5, 8.9). ICO also collaborated with RCO for partnerships in Disaster Risk Reduction, Mission LiFE and Youth20 (SDG 10.13). UNW's engagement with G20 processes influenced the New Delhi Leaders� Declaration, leading to a significant commitment to gender equality goals by the member states. A significant outcome was the Working Group on Empowerment of Women- this will institutionalise GEWE in this global forum which represents 80% of the world�s population. UNW organised a side event at the Ministerial Conference for Women�s Empowerment in August 2023 with thef MWCD and Asian Development Bank. In partnership with the National Institute of Urban Affairs, UN Women organized a two-day conference titled "Creating a Women-led U-20 Framework.�. ICO and G20 Empower also launched the Empower Care Fund for Care Entrepreneurship Accelerator at the G20 EMPOWER Summit (SDG 4.5), to bridge the demand and supply gap for accessible and?affordable care services by promoting entrepreneurial solutions; to target women-led businesses/enterprises that could benefit from the potential of the care economy. Through the inter-agency mechanism of the Gender Task team, the ICO ensured a coordinated engagement on GEWE across UN agencies involved in G20 tracks. Meetings were held to strategise, share common messages, ensure strong gender language in the documents which UN agencies were supporting. Strong gender language in all G20 communique which can be used for national policy and advocacy, through coordinated engagement on GEWE across UN agencies involved in G20 tracks.