Public finance for space odyssey - Scope for gender budgeting

Against the backdrop of United Nations Office for Outer Space Affairs' (UNOOSA’s) 2025 Landmark Study, which documents women's 30 percent global workforce share in public space agencies—declining to 19 percent on boards—this paper applies gender budgeting framework to diagnose fiscal policy imperatives in the Department of Space (DoS), India. Aligning with the foundational principles of the UN Outer Space Treaty (1967), which mandates equitable benefits from space exploration "for all people," and with Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs) 4 (quality education), 5 (gender equality), 9 (industry, innovation, and infrastructure), and 17 (partnerships for the goals), this analysis underscores the scope of gender budgeting as a fiscal accountability tool for inclusive growth in emerging space economies. We analysed the Space budgets across 20 space centres in India, and also across 41 sanctioned Space projects to understand the fiscal incidence and marksmanship in space technology (e.g., launch vehicles, propulsion systems) and space applications (e.g., Earth observation, communication satellites). Despite the absence of specifically targeted programmes for women in the space sector within the Ministry of Finance’s Gender Budgeting Statement 2025-26, our ex-post fiscal incidence analysis reveals that ISRO's significant achievements are inherently women-inclusive in their outcomes, despite workforce underrepresentation. Key findings highlight marked variations in the gender disaggregated fiscal incidence, with utilisation rates ranged from a low of 10.9 percent at IN-SPACe to 21 percent at Vikram Sarabai Space Centre (VSSC) and 32 percent at UR Rao Satellite Centre (URSC). Fiscal marksmanship analysis reveals the deviations between Budget Estimates and Actuals are relatively insignificant in space sector. Integrating results-linked gender budgeting into space policy is crucial, which emerges as a dual lever for equity—ensuring women's voice in high impact decision-making—and efficiency, by harnessing diverse perspectives to optimise resource allocation and innovation trajectories.