Aligarh : Gender-responsive planning and budgeting experts shared expertise with participants from various universities, government offices, PSUs, corporate sector and Uttar Pradesh based NGOs in the three-day state-level workshop on ‘Gender-Responsive Budgeting’ of the Advanced Centre for Women Studies, Aligarh Muslim University (AMU) which concluded on December 23, Friday, at the University Grants Commission-Human Resource Development Centre (UGC HRDC).

The Chief Guest of the valedictory function, the AMU Registrar, IPS Officer Mr Mohammad Imran said, “The importance of gender-responsive budgeting comes from the fact that it helps to achieve gender equality objectives within laws, documents, and strategic plans at national and global levels. In this respect, it helps gender equality become mainstream”.

He shared valuable suggestions for gender responsive allocation of funds to ensure that female students are provided with the required infrastructure to facilitate their education and pointed out that gender responsive budgeting can also be used as a tool for bringing social improvement.

The AMU Registrar called for impact assessments to see the effect of fund allocations to social sectors.

Attending the programme as the Guest-of-Honour, Dr Faiza Abbasi (Director UGC HRDC) emphasised: “Bringing gender equality issues to policy corridors is significant because this is how they become the concern of policymakers”.

The Chief Guest and the Guest of Honour later distributed certificates to the participants.

Professor Azra Musavi (Director, Advanced Centre for Women’s Studies) extended the vote of thanks to the resource persons from the Institute of Human Development, NIPFP, UN Women and CBGA, New Delhi and the Ministry of Women and Child Development for the grant to organise the workshop.

She also pressed the need for integrating the principle of gender equality into public financing processes and public oversight bodies.

Dr Shivangini Tandon (Workshop Coordinator) conducted the program.