Business Desk :
Experts on Tuesday urged the government to design development projects aiming at reducing the gender gap and ensuring women empowerment.
They also underscored the need for greater allocation for gender specific projects in the national budget.
They made the call at a virtual event titled “An Analysis of Gender Sensitive Budgeting: Bangladesh Perspective” jointly organised by the South Asian Network for Economic Model (SANEM) and Bangladesh Mahila Parishad.
Gender-sensitive budgeting can significantly contribute to ensuring gender equality in the country, said Bangladesh Mahila Parishad President Fauzia Moslem, who chaired the programme.
She expressed dissatisfaction over not publishing gender budget reports in the last two national budgets.
SANEM Executive Director Selim Raihan said the issues of women empowerment and rights are well-acknowledged in the policy documents like Eighth Five Year Plan or the national budget but it is not enough. The most important thing is to see whether those commitments mentioned in the policy documents are properly implemented, he said.
SANEM Research Director Dr Sayema Haque in her key-note presentation focused on different aspects and key challenges of gender budgeting.
She said the country has attained some big positive achievements in ensuring gender equity in different sectors like gross enrolment in primary and secondary education but women are still lagging behind in the higher education and vocational and technical programmes as well as per capita mobile phone holding and internet use.
