WOMEN EMPOWERMENT IN AGRICULTURE AND ITS LINK TO FOOD SECURITY: MAPPING KNOWLEDGE GAPS FOR FUTURE RESEARCH

Abstract

In developing country like Pakistan, women are playing an important role in the field of agriculture. However, Women's empowerment and its effects on household food security is always neglected, contrary to the evidence that equality in gender immediately affects access to nutritious food. This review critically analyzed the empirical research, which is conducted for analyzing the link between women empowerment in agriculture and household food security. In this paper, it is explored that how different dimensions of women's empowerment in agriculture influence the household food security and stability. This paper evaluated that how women empowerment link with food security at household level, and how different barriers intersect this significant link. The Gaps found in Literature regarding the use of standardized tools that overlook the intra-household and cultural dynamics. Both indices, such as Women Empowerment in Agriculture (WEAI) and Food Consumption Score (FCS), improved the measurement of women's empowerment and food outcomes, but they are still limited to the realities about context-specific and nuanced challenges faced by the rural women. Institutional hurdles, including unequal land distribution, division of gendered labor, restricted access to the market and problems about mobilization, continued to mitigate the women’s ability to improve household nutrition. Gender-sensitive techniques and context-specific approaches are needed to understand how women's empowerment in agriculture influences household food security.

Keywords: Women’s empowerment, agricultural productivity, food security, gender equality, rural development, policy interventions