Geopolitical Disruption and Food Security: A Gender Lens on the Strait of Hormuz 

By Ilaria Bertocchini

The effects of the blockade of the Strait of Hormuz and the escalation of conflict in the Middle East are often described through numbers: barrels of oil halted each day, percentages of global trade affected, rising transport costs, disrupted shipping routes and destruction. Yet, a gender lens on these dynamics reveals that when one of the world’s most strategic maritime passages becomes unstable, the consequences extend far beyond ports, markets, or diplomatic negotiations, affecting people in uneven and differentiated ways. Indeed, as highlighted by the IMF in the 2026 Regional Economic Outlook for Middle East and Central Asia, rising fuel prices increase the costs of irrigation, transport, refrigeration, and food processing. FAO warns how fertiliser shortages reduce harvests and threaten local agricultural production. Food becomes more expensive precisely in contexts where households already spend a large share of their income simply to eat. These and other consequences have differentiated impacts depending on existing social and economic inequalities, including gendered ones, showing how geopolitics is never gender-neutral. 

When food prices rise, women and girls are often among the first to absorb the shock and the last to be considered in security debates and economic policymaking. Structural inequalities mean that women generally have less access to land, savings, formal employment, credit, and social protection systems. Women are also overrepresented in low-paid and informal sectors of the economy — such as domestic work, small-scale agriculture, and informal trade — where income is unstable and access to labour protections or insurance is limited. At the same time, unpaid care responsibilities — including childcare, cooking, cleaning, and caring for elderly family members — reduce the time and opportunities available for paid work, education, or political participation. These inequalities are rooted in long-standing social, legal, and economic norms that continue to shape who controls resources and who makes decisions within households and communities. As a result, when economic shocks occur, women often have fewer financial reserves, weaker safety nets, and less decision-making power to cope with rising prices or loss of income. 

Past crises offer painful reminders of this reality. During the spike in food prices following the war in Ukraine, women in Lebanon and Egypt reported skipping meals so that children and other family members could eat first. In Yemen, where most staple foods are imported, women and girls had to travel longer distances to access water and humanitarian aid as public services collapsed under the pressure of conflict. In Pakistan, recent increases in fuel and electricity prices have forced many women to reorganise their daily routines, planning meal preparation around limited access to gas.  

Food insecurity also frequently increases the risk of gender-based violence, child marriage, school dropout, and exploitation. During previous crises in Syria and Lebanon, humanitarian organisations documented rising rates of child marriage as families attempted to cope with poverty and displacement. In drought-affected areas of the Horn of Africa, girls were more likely to leave school in order to support domestic labour or contribute to household survival strategies. 

In parts of Kenya and Ethiopia, disruptions in fertiliser supply chains during recent global crises contributed to declining harvests among women farmers, undermining both household food security and local food availability. This happens because women generally have less access to credit, land ownership, and agricultural support programmes than men. Many cultivate small plots with very limited profit margins, making sudden increases in fertilizer or fuel prices quickly unaffordable. In times of economic hardship, men’s agricultural activities are often prioritised, while women’s farming is treated as secondary despite its essential role in household food production. As a result, many women reduce cultivation or stop producing, with direct consequences for both household income and food availability in rural communities. 

Humanitarian systems are coming under growing pressure as well. Rising fuel and transport costs complicate the delivery of food aid and medical supplies to countries already facing severe humanitarian crises, including Sudan, Somalia, Ethiopia, and Afghanistan. For communities already experiencing high levels of malnutrition — particularly among women and children — delays in humanitarian assistance can rapidly become life-threatening. Already in March 2026, The World Food Programme warned that millions of people could fall into acute food insecurity if disruptions continue. 

Ultimately, the crisis in the Strait of Hormuz reveals something larger than a temporary disruption to global trade. It exposes the fragility of a global food system built on dependency, unequal access to resources, and highly concentrated trade routes. It also shows how global crises systematically deepen existing inequalities rather than create new ones. The blockade of the Strait of Hormuz is not only a story about maritime security or regional conflict. It is also a story about how seemingly distant geopolitical decisions shape people’s everyday survival. And it reminds us that food security is never simply about food: it is about power, inequality, care work, and whose burdens remain visible — or invisible — in times of crisis. 

Looking at this crisis through a gender lens also means asking ourselves different the questions.  Beyond oil prices and shipping routes, it is important to wonder who bears the cost of geopolitical instability within households and communities. And we will see that too often the answer is women and girls through unpaid labour, reduced food consumption, interrupted education, economic insecurity, and invisible forms of resilience that rarely appear in political analysis. 

Responding to these crises therefore requires far more than emergency food aid or market stabilisation measures. Humanitarian and economic responses that fail to address gender inequalities risk reinforcing the very vulnerabilities they aim to solve.