Thiruvananthapuram: The United Nations Entity for Gender Equality and the Empowerment of Women (UN Women) has lauded Kerala’s various initiatives towards women empowerment, including the Gender Budget. UN Women praised Kerala when its delegation met the state Health Minister here on Tuesday. 

Annual Gender Budget statements in Kerala have been presented with general Budget documents every year since 2017-18. Kerala’s Gender Budget 2023 -24 has an allocation of Rs 4670.22 crore within a total plan outlay of Rs 22,112 crore.  

Meanwhile, the UN Women delegation noted that the body would provide technical assistance to the state government’s Safe City Project and gender data hub. It will also work closely with gender parks in the state. Notably, Kerala established a Gender Data Hub with the support of UN Women.

Projects and UN Women

Safe City Project involves the identification of hotspots for crime against women and the deployment of various components including infrastructure, technology adoption, and capacity building in the community through awareness programmes that will enable safety for women.

The Gender Park provides innovative and new interventions and directly supports the empowerment of women and all gender identities including transgenders and gender equality. Its activities include Gender research and development, gender awareness, heritage museum expansion, and capacity development. While Gender Data Hub established aims to build a comprehensive gender-disaggregated database for the state. This will be available in the coming years for the planning purpose of our state and also to share it with other agencies and states. 

An initiative for engendering urban planning is also started with UN Women's support.