Lekha Chakraborty's story: The need to reimagine public finance through gender budgeting

On September 3, 2026, at about the same time, I received two seemingly unrelated news. The first was about the death of Gloria Steinem who, some decades ago, had been a well-known and influential “feminist” in the United States. The second news concerned the publication of a book titled Women in Public Finance: Stories of Gender in Budgeting (edited by Maja Bosnić and Manal Fouad, Routledge, 2026). The book contained papers, written by women economists that dealt with “gender budgeting”, or with how public finance and budgeting have not been “gender neutral“. Rather they have ignored the budgets had promoted some possible discrimination against women, in the various policies that they had proposed and adopted.

A few decades ago, Gloria Steinem had been a prominent “feminist” in the Unites States. She had campaigned and demonstrated against various open or often hidden discrimination that she believed existed against women, in the United States and in other countries. They existed at time openly and often in hidden forms. I had been aware of the existence of some of them especially when inheritance laws had favoured males, when males more than females were encouraged to go to school, when females had not been allowed to vote, when they could not aspire to enter some professions, and when in some countries daughters were encouraged to enter convents. Few women had attended universities in those years, and few had entered the official labour force, but had continued to work in the “domestic economy “ thus in some ways distorting the newly created national accounts statistics. The main function of women in society had been seen that of bearing children, and especially male children. The work of Gloria Steinem had played some role in bringing social, political and economic equality between the two genders. And she had been honoured for that work in later years by President Obama.

The paper by Lekha (Chakraborty) in Women in Public Finance provides a striking example of the gender discrimination that had existed in India, where a man could divorce his wife and abandon his legal children by simply sending a letter. Her father had no legal obligation towards the very small children that he had helped to bring to this world. Her mother, a nurse, had been left to take care of her children in her very poor conditions. The chapter shows in striking fashion the will power, the stamina, the determination and the sacrifices, in addition to the basic ability that must have been required to allow Lekha to move from such circumstances to the professional status that she has achieved today. Having come from such circumstances, Lekha’s successful career as an economist must have been almost a miracle.

The book, and Lekha’s chapter in particular, left me a bit embarrassed. In my 60 years of work as a public finance economist, and as the author of at least 25 books (mostly in public finance) and hundreds of articles in public-finance journals, I had never addressed issues of gender discrimination in public finance. I now see this as a shortcoming in my professional output.

I am glad that the book and Lekha’s chapter have made us aware that this is an area of public finance that deserves attention. I hope the volume will stimulate further related work until gender discrimination no longer exists. Lekha’s article is an eye-opener, and her personal story is truly striking. I hope the book will draw attention to an aspect of public finance that clearly needs more attention in all countries-and in some more than in others.

The author is former director of the IMF Fiscal Affairs, and Honorary President of the International Institute of Public Finance, Munich