Gender Responsive Budgeting (GRB) and Public Finance Research Support

UN Women, grounded in the vision of equality enshrined in the Charter of the United Nations, works for the elimination of discrimination against women and girls; the empowerment of women; and the achievement of equality between women and men as partners and beneficiaries of development, human rights, humanitarian action and peace and security. Achieving gender equality and women’s empowerment is an essential element of the 2030 Agenda for Sustainable Development - the roadmap to a more equal, just, peaceful, and sustainable world. UN Women India Country Office is implementing a donor-funded project titled GenderEqualityXcelerate: Transformative Pathways towards Gender Justice for women’s social, economic, and political equality and empowerment towards achievement of the 2030 agenda.

The overarching objective of this project is to strengthen women’s leadership in economic, social, and political spheres. The project is being implemented in India over a period of four years (2024-2028) in the states of Madhya Pradesh, Maharashtra, Kerala, Odisha, and Bihar. The following are the broad intended outcomes of the project: - UN Women’s institutional impact on advancing gender equality is accelerated through outcome-driven advocacy efforts. - Government and non-government stakeholders prioritise, monitor and evaluate GEWE investments at the grassroots level. - Transforming norms, strengthening response mechanisms, and empowering stakeholders for a survivor-centric environment through effectively utilising the Nirbhaya Fund. UN Women, through this programme, is working at the local level governance (panchayat) level in select states (Madhya Pradesh, Maharashtra and Odisha) to further deepen the concept of Gender Responsive Budgeting (GRB). The programme seeks to strengthen the capacities of government officials, elected representatives, technical institutions and other stakeholders to advance gender responsive planning, budgeting, implementation and monitoring at the panchayat level. The proposed research assignment will support the GRB Unit, India Country Office, in undertaking qualitative-cum-quantitative research on Gender Responsive Budgeting, fiscal devolution, Gram Panchayat Development Plans (GPDPs), Panchayati Raj institutions, State Finance Commissions and the Union Finance Commission. The assignment will involve examining how the 2026-31 fiscal devolution architecture, local body grants, tied and untied grants, performance conditions and GPDP processes can better reflect women’s priorities and gender equality outcomes at the grassroots level. The Sixteenth Finance Commission’s report for 2026–31 has been submitted and tabled in Parliament. Finance Commission devolution creates fiscal space for States, but without explicit gender criteria or a legal mandate it does not automatically raise GRB allocations or outcomes. The limited gender integration in the Sixteenth Finance Commission, compared with earlier commissions, is the central gap this study addresses. The assignment requires four OVs with strong analytical, and report writing skills and engage deeply with academic literature, journal articles, grey literature, policy papers, budget documents, Finance Commission reports, State Finance Commission reports, Government documents/reports/publications, state-level GRB documents, GPDP guidelines and relevant datasets.

Under the day-to-day direct supervision of the Programme Analyst (GRB) and the overall guidance of the Programme Lead/Coordinator (GRB), UN Women India CO, the four OVs will provide research, analytical and documentation support for the study on Gender Responsive Budgeting and the Sixteenth Finance Commission. The OVs will coordinate periodically with the GRB Unit through agreed online / in-person meetings and review mechanisms, as required. The study will focus on four interlinked research questions/dimensions: - Gender and the Finance Commission: What are the key gender gaps in the recommendations and grant design of the Sixteenth Finance Commission compared to earlier Finance Commissions, and what practical options can be proposed to embed gender criteria in devolution and local-body grants, including for the Seventeenth Finance Commission? - Gender-responsive GPDP: How can the Gram Panchayat Development Plan and Panchayat planning processes better reflect women’s needs and priorities in practice through gender situation analysis, meaningful participation of women, and stronger SHG-PRI convergence? - From allocations to outcomes: Why do Gender Responsive Budgeting allocations at the State and sub-State levels often not translate into measurable outcomes for women and girls, and how can simple gender outcome-tracking mechanisms be introduced? - Institutionalising GRB at the local level: What institutional arrangements, data systems and capacity-building measures are required to make GRB a regular part of Panchayat planning, budgeting, implementation and monitoring? The allocation of specific tasks between the four OVs will be decided basis their experience by the UN Women team, through the GRB Unit/supervisor. Each OV will be assigned one research questions/dimensions, based on the requirements of the study and the guidance of the GRB Unit/supervisor. The OVs will have the following tasks. This is a general range of the project, and all final task allocation and research focus will be decided by UN Women after the recruitment of the Online Volunteers basis their skillset and experience: Research design, literature review and knowledge synthesis - Conduct an extensive review of peer-reviewed journal articles, working papers, grey literature, government reports, Finance Commission documents, State Finance Commission reports, GPDP guidelines, gender budgeting manuals, public finance papers and policy briefs relevant to GRB and fiscal devolution in India. All materials will be provided by UN Women. - Prepare an annotated bibliography and literature matrix capturing research questions, methodology, evidence base, major findings, policy relevance and gaps in the literature. - Review national and state-level GRB practices, including Gender Budget Statements, budget circulars, departmental gender budget cells, state GRB manuals and relevant training resources. - Map the relationship between GRB, GPDPs, Panchayat-level planning, local body grants and the 3Fs of decentralisation - funds, functions and functionaries. - Identify policy questions that may help UN Women engage with government counterparts on gender-responsive local planning and financing in the context of the Sixteenth Finance Commission award period. Quantitative research and fiscal/data analysis - Compile and organise relevant quantitative data from publicly available sources, including Union and State budget documents, Gender Budget Statements, Finance Commission reports, eGramSwaraj/GPDP related data, local body grants data, state-level devolution data and other official datasets as advised by the supervisor. - Support descriptive, comparative and trend analysis of fiscal transfers, local body grants, tied and untied allocations, gender budget allocations, utilisation patterns and sectoral priorities relevant to women and girls. - Develop simple state-wise and sector-wise analytical tables, charts, coding sheets and summary dashboards using Excel and where appropriate, R, STATA, SPSS or any comparable research/statistical tool. - Support construction of a preliminary analytical framework for assessing whether local planning and fiscal transfers are responsive to women’s needs and gender equality outcomes. - Maintain clean, well-labelled datasets, variable notes, codebooks and reproducible analysis files for internal review and use by UN Women. Qualitative research and policy analysis - Support the development of qualitative research tools, including interview guides, key informant interview schedules, focus group discussion guides, consultation notes, thematic coding templates and stakeholder mapping tools. - Review GPDP processes and local governance practices from a gender lens, including Gram Sabha participation, women’s leadership, service delivery gaps, convergence of schemes, care infrastructure, safe public spaces, livelihoods, water, sanitation, mobility, health and social protection priorities. - Analyse institutional mechanisms relevant to GRB at the local level, including Panchayati Raj departments, finance departments, Women and Child Development departments, State Institutes of Rural Development and Panchayati Raj, and district/block/panchayat-level planning systems. - Prepare short analytical notes on how Finance Commission and State Finance Commission recommendations interact with panchayat-level planning, devolution, accountability and gender-responsive outcomes. - Support synthesis of evidence from consultations, field notes, meeting records and secondary sources, wherever made available by UN Women. Writing, documentation and knowledge products - Prepare high-quality written inputs for the research report, including background sections, literature review, methodology notes, data analysis, policy context, state comparison notes and draft recommendations. - Prepare short policy briefs, internal notes, slide decks, talking points and concept notes as required by the GRB Unit. The number of written products will be decided basis the team of OVs by UN Women. - Ensure that all writing is original, evidence-based, carefully referenced, plagiarism-free and consistent with UN Women’s standards of professional documentation. - Maintain an open-source reference libraries such as Zotero using or a comparable reference-management system, with complete bibliographic details and accessible source links wherever available. - Incorporate supervisor feedback in a timely manner and support editing, proofreading and formatting of final outputs. Coordination, ethics and quality assurance - Participate in periodic review calls with the supervisor and submit weekly progress updates against agreed deliverables. - Follow ethical research principles while handling secondary data, stakeholder inputs and qualitative material. - Work collaboratively with other OVs, state teams, consultants and UN Women colleagues as advised by the supervisor. Indicative deliverables - Inception note: refined research questions, methodology, workplan and source list (Week 2). - Focused evidence matrix and key datasets on GRB, the Finance Commission, GPDP and local governance, with source notes (Week 4). - Analytical Note 1 – Gender and the Sixteenth Finance Commission: gap analysis and options for the Seventeenth Finance Commission (Week 7). - Analytical Note 2 – Making GPDP and local GRB work: from allocations to outcomes (Week 9). - One consolidated policy brief and presentation deck for UN Women’s engagement with government, with the final research folder (Week 12).