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The instrumentalist literature suggests that women can help achieve household food security if they have access to productive resources but do not become overburdened as a result. This paper seeks to assess the relevance of this literature by exploring the gendered cycles of food insecurity in the context of women’s informal labour in northern Mozambique. It considers the relation between women and food security as embedded in the broader socio-economic setting, and finds that the interaction of different forms of deprivation, such as lack of secure employment and conflicting labour demands, generates food insecurity.