When a government prepares its budget, the discussion often centers on revenue, expenditure, aid, deficits, and development priorities. But behind these numbers are real lives. Decisions to fund a hospital, build a school, expand a social protection initiative, or improve public transport can affect women and men in different ways. We often ask whether enough public money goes to women’s needs. But there is another question worth asking: who gets to make those decisions? We must also consider whether women have a meaningful voice in the institutions that raise, allocate, spend, and analyse public money.
Bangladesh’s FY2026-27 budget brings this question into sharper focus, as the gender-relevant budget reached Tk 3,26,059.8 crore, equivalent to 34.8 percent of the national budget. However, the allocation for the Ministry of Women and Children Affairs has fallen to Tk 5,196 crore from Tk 5,371 crore in the previous year’s revised budget, while recent analysis has raised concerns about implementation, outcome measurement, and accountability. These figures prompt the question of how we can ensure that public spending advances gender equality and who has the authority to make those decisions.
A recently published book, Women in Public Finance: Stories of Gender in Budgeting, edited by Maja Bosnić and Manal Fouad, brings this question into focus. Through the experiences of women working in public finance across different countries, the book highlights the challenges and opportunities facing women in a field traditionally dominated by technical discourse and male leadership. It reminds us that public finance is not gender-neutral simply because its language is technical.
Bangladesh has made notable progress in women’s education, economic participation, and political representation. It has also developed experience in gender-responsive budgeting, seeking to align public expenditure with gender equality and women’s empowerment. These efforts are important, but they raise a further question: while governments increasingly consider women in their budgets, are enough women involved in shaping the decisions behind those budgets?
In my more than 20 years of experience in finance, governance, audit, treasury management, and public sector reform, I have seen an increasing number of women joining accounting, auditing, economics, and financial management, bringing talent, expertise, and fresh perspectives to the field. But while women are well represented at entry and mid-career levels, they are still underrepresented in senior leadership positions where strategic decisions are made.
The Public Expenditure and Financial Accountability (PEFA) Gender Responsive Public Financial Management Framework, launched in 2020, offers a useful way to examine this relationship. Its nine indicators assess how gender considerations are incorporated across the budget cycle, including policy analysis, public investment, expenditure tracking, service delivery evaluation, and legislative scrutiny. The framework makes clear that gender responsiveness is not simply about identifying allocations for women; it is also about examining how public financial management systems operate and what results they achieve. For Bangladesh, the next step should be to connect gender-related budget allocations more systematically with implementation, measurable outcomes, and accountability. Governments need reliable information on who benefits from public spending, whether services are accessible and effective, and where gaps remain.
Women’s participation can strengthen this process. Women working in finance ministries, budget divisions, audit institutions, public enterprises, and reform programmes can contribute their professional expertise and perspectives to policy design and oversight. Decisions about taxation, public investment, social protection, healthcare, education, and infrastructure can have different consequences for different groups, and these differences deserve careful analysis.
This calls for practical institutional changes. Women should have fair access to senior technical and leadership positions in public finance, supported by transparent promotion processes, mentoring, and opportunities to lead major reforms. Budget institutions should make greater use of sex-disaggregated performance data and independent evaluations to assess who benefits from public expenditure. Audit findings and legislative scrutiny should also examine whether public programmes achieve their intended results for women and men.
Equally important is the need to recognise women as decision-makers, not merely as beneficiaries of public policy. Their participation should extend throughout the public financial management cycle, including decisions about revenue, spending priorities, implementation, and accountability. This requires more than appointing women to committees; it requires giving them the authority, information, and institutional support needed to influence decisions.
The argument is not that women automatically make better financial decisions than men. Good public finance depends on professional competence, sound evidence, integrity, and effective institutions. But institutions make better-informed decisions when they draw on a wider range of experiences and perspectives. Excluding capable professionals from leadership narrows the pool of talent available to solve complex public problems.
Bangladesh has demonstrated its ability to pursue ambitious reforms in public financial management and women’s empowerment. The opportunity now is to bring these agendas closer together: to strengthen not only the gender responsiveness of public budgets but also women’s participation in the institutions that formulate, implement, and scrutinise them.
Ultimately, a budget is more than a financial document. It reflects public priorities, distributes opportunities, and determines how citizens experience the state. Ensuring that women have a meaningful voice in these decisions is not simply a matter of representation. It is part of building more responsive, transparent and accountable public institutions.
Rizwana Tabassum is a PhD researcher and finance and governance professional.
Views expressed in this article are the author’s own.
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