Lead researcher: Samreen Malik 

Partner: Samreen Malik 

Duration: February – March 2025 

Country: Pakistan 

Radical narratives with links to extremism can have a profound effect on young women and girls. These narratives often disadvantage girls in their formative years, stigmatising them and curbing their access to education and health. This research puts the spotlight on these often neglected dimensions of terrorism and the long-term effects for girls and women. It will pinpoint the impact on disease prevention, growth, and schooling for girls, and later, on earnings and development overall. By doing so, the research will draw out findings to inform policies geared around bridging the gender gap at local and national level in Pakistan, as well as the wider region and other conflict-affected countries. It will offer recommendations for Pakistan’s government and international organisations that fund development regionally, particularly initiatives targeting women’s rights and empowerment.  

The project will use a methodological approach combining qualitative and quantitative data analysis. It will conduct Focus Group Discussions (FGDs) with a sample of households from 8 districts in Pakistan based on the number of terrorist attacks perpetrated in each district – high-terrorism intensity and low-terrorism intensity. The target population will be parents who had school-age children in the period from 1998 to 2019 and teachers. The project will then conduct a district-level analysis covering the same period for all the districts in Pakistan combining geo-coded data on terrorism from the Global Terrorism Database with the individual-level data from the Pakistan Social and Living Standards Measurement (PSLM) to compare the outcomes for females in districts with and without terror attacks. These FDGs will inform the project about the factors motivating parents’ decisions regarding their children in different security situations.  

This project is one of several focused on women and girls in cross-border conflict contexts. The main output will be a research manuscript for submission for publication in a peer-reviewed journal or as an XCEPT research report.  

For more information regarding this research, contact [email protected]