Gender budgeting for relevant ministries needs to be enacted aimed at ensuring women empowerment in the truest sense instead of attaining just a quantity.
Speakers came up with the recommendation on Monday at a discussion on budget allocation for women in the upcoming fiscal at the auditorium of Bangladesh Mahila Parishad.
The experts also said the government can introduce a systematic gender sensitive national budget monitoring procedure on a regular basis to this end.
National budget must reflect Naari Niti (Women Police) 2011 and UN - Convention on the Elimination of All Forms of Discrimination Against Women, they said.
Ayesha Khanam, President, Bangladesh Mahila Parisad, Nazneen Ahmed, Senior research fellow of Bangladesh Institute of Development Studies (BIDS), Dr Sayema Haque Bidisha, professor of Department of Economics, University of Dhaka, spoke on the occasion.
Ayesha Khanam laid emphasis on monitoring and evaluation of budget allocation and utilisation in this regard.
Nazneen Ahmed said women health issues should be highlighted in the budget.She also stressed the need for developing entrepreneurship for women.
Dr Sayema Haque Bidisha, who also presented a keynote paper at the function, said strengthening monitoring and evaluation of projects through gender lens and coordination across ministries are very important to ensure proper and best utilisation of budget allocation for women.
Lack of gender-friendly environment and related support mechanism can make some programmes ineffective, Dr Sayema mentioned.
