Gaza’s women struggle to keep families alive as hardship deepens: UN Women

KARACHI: Women in Gaza are bearing the heaviest burden of survival despite the ceasefire, facing hunger, displacement, and relentless violence, the UN’s gender equality agency warned on Tuesday.
UN Women’s Chief of Humanitarian Action, Sofia Calltorp, after returning from a field visit across the enclave, said Gazan women repeatedly told her that “there may be a cease-fire, but the war is not over,” as killings and attacks continue across several areas.
During her visit from Jabalia in the north to Al-Mawasi in the south, Calltorp said she saw women struggling to protect their families in makeshift shelters soaked by winter rains, with many unable to afford food due to skyrocketing prices – an egg now costing $2 in Gaza’s markets.
More than 57,000 women are now heading households, many after losing male family members. Some families have been displaced over 30 times since the war began, forced to move from one unsafe location to another while carrying children and elderly relatives.
UN Women also highlighted a growing crisis of women and girls newly disabled by the conflict, with over 12,000 suffering long-term war-related injuries.
Calltorp said Gaza’s women urgently need consistent aid, food, cash assistance, winter supplies, health care, and psychological support. She stressed the immediate need for safe and systematic entry of humanitarian aid and called for the killings to stop.
“No woman should have to fight this hard just to survive,” she said, urging the international community to act before winter conditions further worsen the suffering.