Before war shattered her world, Gazan journalist and activist Hala Shamaly’s mornings began simply—with steaming coffee, a favourite song, and the gentle comfort of routine. “Tomorrow was clear-cut, the routine simple yet secure; above all, safety sheltered us,” she recalls wistfully. Today, her mornings are drastically different. She wakes to the deafening roar of fighter jets overhead, her first thoughts a quiet prayer: that the roof remains intact. “I open my eyes not to begin a new day or pursue a dream,” Hala says, “but merely to be sure I am still alive and the house—or tent or shelter—has not collapsed on my head”.
In Gaza’s devastating conflict, survival has overtaken dignity as the daily priority for millions, particularly women and girls. United Nations officials have described the situation plainly, calling it a “war on women”—a catastrophic collision of violence and famine whose silent burdens disproportionately target women. This report therefore centers their burdens—and their ingenuity—amid Gaza’s war-and-famine landscape.
Since October 2023, at least 10,000 Gazan women and girls have perished amid relentless bombardments. Those who survive face uniquely gendered challenges: menstruating without sanitary pads, giving birth in pitch darkness, dodging sniper fire while searching desperately for water and food where famine is the only news. Yet their lives are defined not merely by hardship, but by remarkable resilience and ingenuity.
The Extraordinary Ordinary
In Gaza today, the ordinary is extraordinary.
“Each day starts with hunting for food,” says Hala, “then for fuel or wood to cook it, then medicine—if it exists—and finally clean water, which can take hours”. Contaminated water breeds illness, and scarce medications mean treatable ailments become unbearable. “You might scrape up food,” she adds, “but needing an unavailable or unaffordable drug makes your very existence feel burdensome. Enduring hunger is easier than enduring pain or illness without treatment”.
Women’s daily battles over basic hygiene offer a stark picture of this crisis. Roughly 690,000 women and girls menstruate each month, yet pads—if available at all—are prohibitively expensive due to Israel’s blockade. “I can still find sanitary pads at astronomical prices, but many cannot,” Hala explains. Women improvise, cutting old clothes into makeshift pads, risking infections, discomfort, and profound humiliation. Others delay menstruation entirely by taking contraceptives like norethisterone, despite painful side effects.
“A woman today is a risk-taker in every sense,” Hala emphasises. With hospitals damaged or undersupplied, gynecological infections often go untreated or are addressed only with salt water, ginger, cinnamon, or baking soda—if available. Older women silently endure menopause without care, battling untreated infections, chronic pain, and hot flashes in overcrowded shelters. Their quiet suffering reveals another dimension of Gaza’s “war on women,” one rarely seen in headlines.
Dangerous Childbirth
Childbirth has become equally perilous. Gaza’s hospitals, such as Nasser Hospital in Khan Younis, operate at triple their intended capacity, conducting emergency Caesarean sections by the glow of cellphone lights. Mothers give birth in makeshift tents, shelters, or even latrines—often with devastating results. Medical staff reuse equipment without sterilisation or anaesthetics, leaving women conscious and biting cloth to withstand pain. “Childbirth means choosing between bombs outside and hemorrhaging in darkness inside,” a horrifying new reality Hala describes vividly.
Women on the Front-Line of Survival
Yet despite unimaginable hardship, Gazan women remain far from passive victims. They have emerged as frontline responders, bravely stepping into voids created by absent or lost fathers, husbands, and sons. “Eighty percent of those standing by street fires baking bread are women,” Hala points out, underscoring their leadership in sustaining communities. They haul water, organise relief efforts, extract neighbours from rubble, and perform critical medical care with improvised trauma kits.
Their visibility boldly defies stereotypes of Arab women as submissive or silent. A Gaza City nurse recently told Hala: “We used to be seen as victims. Now we are the ones people run to first”. Wartime necessity has thrust women into roles of protector, provider, and organiser, reshaping community dynamics profoundly.
Grass-Roots Solidarity
Behind Gaza’s grim headlines, women forge resilient feminist networks. Through WhatsApp, Telegram, and word-of-mouth, they exchange essentials—cloth diapers, homemade pads, formula, antibiotics—despite displacement repeatedly destroying their careful webs of mutual support. “Financial help is almost impossible,” Hala laments. “Transactions are hard—you might pay twice the price if you pay cash. I myself refuse to beg; need is obvious enough”.
When market shelves empty, ingenuity keeps families alive. Women grow rooftop gardens, swapping seedlings and conserving grey water, even transforming wrecked schoolyards into community herb gardens. Diaspora Palestinians and global feminist networks offer vital solidarity, providing remote mental health counselling and resources, embodying what Hala calls a global “sisterhood”.
Hunger and Malnutrition
Yet, hunger persists relentlessly. “Fainting spells are now common,” Hala recounts. “You might see a young man suddenly collapse; someone rushes off to find sugar or cake—anything to wake them”. Nursing mothers cannot produce milk; infant formula, blocked by the siege, becomes scarce. A cousin lost her ninth-month pregnancy, miscarrying due to malnutrition. “She sat by the fire without enough food or drink,” Hala shares bitterly.
Aid distribution often compounds suffering. Corruption, favouritism, and physical danger discourage women from seeking help. Hala describes a man accused by his wife of selling aid for cigarettes, only for her own attempts to reveal deeper corruption and disrespect. “It is an enormous challenge—especially for a woman—to go out for aid while exposed to danger,” she stresses.
Water: Life or Death
Nowhere is the gendered toll clearer than in Gaza’s water crisis. With infrastructure destroyed and supplies blocked, women and girls bear the immense burden of fetching water under fire. They queue for hours at taps exposed to bombardment, facing violence and harassment daily. Inside shelters, inadequate sanitation forces them to restrict fluid intake, causing severe dehydration, kidney stones, and infections. The UN calls this crisis “the inability to meet our simplest needs,” while Human Rights Watch accuses Israel of weaponising hunger and thirst—disproportionately affecting women responsible for caregiving and hygiene.
“Every drop is life or death,” Hala insists. “Gaza is starved without mercy or humanity”. Her words are an urgent call: Gaza’s humanitarian catastrophe is deeply gendered; its solutions must centre women and girls who shoulder the heaviest burdens yet demonstrate extraordinary strength and resourcefulness.
Gazan women are documenting and resisting the war in every way they can. They warn that Gaza’s crisis is deeply gendered and insist any aid or peace plan must put women and girls first. Every homemade sanitary pad, safely delivered baby, meager meal, and shared testimony is an act of defiance. Carrying the greatest burdens of war and famine, these women have become the backbone of their society’s survival—and they now implore the world to end the nightmare imposed on them and their people.