GENDERED FOOD INSECURITY AND ITS IMPLICATIONS ON THE NATIONAL SECURITY OF PAKISTAN

Abstract

Pakistan's food insecurity crisis is well documented, yet its gendered dimensions remain peripheral to national security discourse. This paper argues that gendered food insecurity, the structurally unequal experience of food deprivation by women, constitutes a direct and compounding threat to Pakistan's stability. Drawing on Bina Agarwal's feminist political economy framework, the study advances two arguments. Empirically, women's chronic exclusion from food, assets, and economic participation suppresses female labour force participation, drives girls out of education, accelerates child marriage, and normalises gender-based violence, each pathway eroding the human capital and fiscal foundations on which national security rests. Theoretically, drawing on comparative case studies from Yemen, Nigeria, and Afghanistan, the paper constructs a plausible pathway from gendered food deprivation to household desperation, state delegitimisation, and eventual militant recruitment. The paper concludes that gendered food insecurity is not a social welfare concern at the margins of security policy, but a structural vulnerability at its centre.