Women at the Margin: National Security and Deprivation of Rights

Abstract

This article critically interrogates the lived experiences of women residing in the border villages of Punjab, where the institutional arrangements and security apparatus associated with the international border have profoundly influenced everyday life and significantly curtailed women’s freedoms and mobility. Although no formal legal provisions prohibit women from accessing agricultural land, the prevailing security compulsions, surveillance practices, and regulatory mechanisms operating within the border region effectively prevent their participation in agricultural activities, which constitute the principal source of household livelihood.The study is grounded in household-level fieldwork conducted among one hundred households across six villages of Amritsar district of Punjab adjoining the Indo–Pakistan international border. It seeks to examine the gendered dimensions of marginalisation and exclusion experienced by women inhabiting these strategically sensitive borderlands. While the borderland population as a whole remains vulnerable due to its geographical location and the conflict-ridden nature of the Indo–Pakistan border, women experience a more acute and differentiated form of marginalisation, particularly in relation to their customary participation in the agrarian economy and household production processes.The findings of the study demonstrate that women are systematically excluded from engaging in agricultural work on their own land and are increasingly confined to domestic roles and unpaid household responsibilities. Their enforced detachment from agricultural labour has not only diminished their economic participation and productive contribution to household livelihood but has also reinforced pre-existing structures of socio-economic dependency, gender inequality, and political marginalisation.