The food security scenario in South Asia has witnessed rapid progress over the last few decades, yet nutrition outcomes, especially those related to women and children, have failed to keep pace. This paper contends that the role of women in providing food and nutrition security at the household and individual level needs to be examined, if the paradox of persisting malnutrition amid macro level food sufficiency is to be resolved. Food security, in its broader connotation, results from the availability of adequate food, effective consumption, and desirable nutrition outcomes. As such, it is intricately linked with a woman's multiple roles expressed in her productive, reproductive, and caring functions. However, even focussed efforts aimed at resolving the problems faced by women in performing one or other of their roles, may fail to produce expected results, if the issues underlying each function and their inter-linkages are not fully understood. The paper thus attempts to review various aspects of the relationship between women and food security in South Asia, highlight the issues that require urgent focus and indicate emerging concerns in the region.

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Gender studies tends to focus almost exclusively on women, a focus which is needed to restore balance to the heavily skewed gender equation. However, the perception that "gender" connotes the balance of power between women and men is lost along the way. A single-minded focus on women will miss scenarios where men may be equally vulnerable. This article will attempt to shift the focus back to the significance of the gender equation by assessing the intensity of gender disparity across geographic space, and enquiring into the reasons for the persisting inequalities. A basic question which we seek to answer is whether women are equally unequal across geographic space. India's multitude of distinct regional contexts provides a good testing ground. As the states of the Indian Union tend to have distinct regional entities, inter-state gender disparities would reflect both economic and sociocultural diversities grounded in historical realities.