GAZA, (PIC)
In Gaza, days are not measured by hours, but by the ability of people to remain steadfast, and while everyone lives under the weight of crises, the lives of women appear more complex, where daily responsibilities intersect with fear, poverty, and instability.
According to recent data issued by UN Women, women and girls pay the greatest price for the reality after the war of genocide in the Gaza Strip, which UN reports describe as one of the worst contemporary humanitarian disasters.
From housewife to primary breadwinner
With the loss of sources of income, women found themselves in a position that was not taken into account, as they transformed from housewives to the primary breadwinners for their families.
The mother Um Alaa, forty-two years old, tells the PIC correspondent, “I became responsible for everything, I sell the bread I produce in the displacement tent to spend on the family and feed my children in light of the lack of work and my husband stopping work due to the destruction of the factory where he was working before the war.”
According to the description of Um Alaa, she was living in her house, which was destroyed by the Israeli occupation army north of Nuseirat refugee camp, doing nothing but caring for her children and her beautiful home that she built brick by brick with her husband, but today she is required to work night and day for the sake of her family’s continuity and survival.
This forced transformation was not only in the case of Um Alaa, but is repeated in thousands of families, as UN reports indicate that the war destroyed the livelihoods of hundreds of thousands of women and made them forced to work in order to maintain their families and provide food for their children.
Working for survival and nothing more
Samar, twenty-nine years old, a university graduate with an excellence grade, dreamed of working as a teaching assistant in her specialization, but today she works in sewing, to support her family and help with the many expenses doubled by the war.
Samar tells the PIC correspondent, “Work today in the Gaza Strip is no longer to achieve dreams but only so we can live, as my dreams were big, and I wanted to work in what I desire and love, but today I am in a place I never expected to belong to one day, but circumstances made me a part of it against my will.”
She confirms that many like her have become forced partners in bearing the burden of spending on their families due to the poor economic reality and the inability of men alone to bear this burden due to unemployment and the lack of jobs and businesses that were weak before the war and became non-existent in the current period.
The most expensive price
The previous stories reflect more broadly what was revealed by the latest data from the Palestinian Central Bureau of Statistics, which indicates that women pay the most expensive price, as the number of widows has risen to 22,057 women, while the percentage of households headed by women jumped from 12% before the war to about 18% in late 2025.
UN Women estimates that one in every seven families in Gaza is now headed by a woman, which means there are more than 16,000 women who lost their husbands and bear a double burden in making fateful decisions amidst the current difficult circumstances.
The suffering is not limited to providing income, but extends to the details of arduous daily life; where long queues of women and children wait for hours under the sun to obtain gallons of potable water, in a scene that has come to summarize the daily life of displacement in the camps of the Gaza Strip.
With the continuation of the current reality, these women find themselves in direct confrontation with the collapse of social support networks, which forces them to innovate and struggle in an unstable labor market, to try to live under harsh living conditions.
Estimates indicate the spread of anxiety and post-traumatic stress disorder among women, in light of continuous exposure to bombardment, displacement, and loss.
In Gaza, the story of women is not summarized by the word suffering, it is an entire life lived under pressure, where roles shift, and the ability to endure is tested day after day.