Amid ongoing Israeli airstrikes and scarce resources, a growing number of women-headed households in war-torn Gaza face “impossible decisions” every day, UN humanitarian officials said on Tuesday. According to a new analysis from UN Women, nearly one in four households in Gaza is headed by a woman, amounting to an estimated 86,290 families. This includes widows and women whose husbands are missing, detained, severely injured, forcibly disappeared, or whose fate remains unknown.
“This is double the pre-October 2023 rate and follows the widespread killings of Palestinians,” said Sofia Calltorp, chief of humanitarian action at UN Women, the United Nations organization dedicated to gender equality and the empowerment of women.
With tens of thousands of Palestinians killed in Israeli airstrikes and ground operations, women are left alone to make critical decisions — including how to secure food and shelter, obtain humanitarian assistance, manage scarce resources, and care for their families.
Continued bombardment, restrictions on humanitarian access, and severe shortages of safe water, food, hygiene supplies, and lifesaving services are intensifying these pressures, according to the UN Women analysis.
Killings of women and girls continue despite the ceasefire
The update comes 11 months after a ceasefire agreement was reached between the non-state armed group Hamas and Israel. The ceasefire has not stopped continued exchanges of fire or the killing of 246 Palestinian women and girls by Israeli air bombardment and military ground operations in Gaza.
“This is equivalent to six women and girls killed every week between October 2025 and July 28, 2026,” Calltorp said.
Across the enclave today, access to food, drinking water, hygiene supplies and essential services remains “severely limited”, the UN official told journalists in Geneva.
“There are restrictions on humanitarian access, insecurity and continued Israeli bombardment,” she explained.
“Women heading households are every day forced to make impossible decisions on how to allocate scarce resources, how to access assistance and simply ensure the survival of those in their care.”
Among victims are 18-year-old Raghad Ashour, “killed in an Israeli strike on her way to her 11th grade high school exam in Gaza City”, Calltorp said.
“Thirty-one-year-old Dina Almadhoun was killed in a strike in Gaza City; a six-year-old girl was killed in a helicopter strike on an encampment for displaced families in the Mawasi area of Khan Younis.”
According to Gazan health authorities, the overall reported casualty toll since the ceasefire agreement is 1,303 fatalities and 4,336 injuries, which brings the death toll since October 2023 to more than 73,000 people. Among the confirmed fatalities are over 21,000 children. An estimated 58,000 children have lost one or both parents.
The true death toll is believed to be higher. Verified casualties also include at least 596 aid workers, 402 UN staff members, 1,700 health care workers, and 262 journalists. Additionally, Israeli military forces have injured over 174,000 people in Gaza. An estimated 43,000 of those injured have suffered life-changing disabilities.
Displacement, shrinking space, and catastrophic shelter needs
UN Women’s analysis showed that households headed by women are more likely to lack shelter, food, and money than households headed by men.
“They are also more likely to be displaced or have their home destroyed,” Calltorp stressed.
UN Women calls for the ceasefire in Gaza to be fully implemented, for international law to be upheld, and for those who have violated it to be held accountable, while also protecting women and girls.
As a result of Israel’s war on Gaza, triggered by Hamas-led terror attacks in Israel in October 2023, most of Gaza’s population of around 2.1 million remains displaced. Palestinians are confined to less than 40 percent of the Gaza Strip, as Israeli authorities continue to restrict access beyond the “Yellow” and “Orange” lines.
According to UN Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs (OCHA), more than half of the population (58 percent) faces critical or catastrophic shelter needs. When the “Yellow Line” was established following the ceasefire, it covered around 53 percent of the Gaza Strip.
With restrictions later expanded by Israeli forces, around two-thirds of Gaza are either inaccessible or subject to severe access restrictions. These actions force Palestinians into ever-smaller pockets of land, raising serious concerns about ethnic cleansing as a crime against humanity targeting the civilian population — or even as part of an ongoing genocide against Palestinians as a group.
Systematic atrocity crimes, lack of accountability, and impunity
In June, a United Nations commission of inquiry issued a scathing report stating that Israeli authorities and security forces are still committing genocide, crimes against humanity, and war crimes in Gaza. This follows the commission's conclusion last year that Israel was committing genocide against the Palestinian population in the territory.
The updated report by the UN Independent International Commission of Inquiry on the Occupied Palestinian Territory, including East Jerusalem, and Israel emphasized that Israeli military operations have continued on a large scale and in a systematic manner. These operations have resulted in an unprecedented number of deaths, injuries, and cases of trauma among Palestinian children.
The Commission reiterated that deliberately targeting children is key to proving the genocidal intent of the Israeli authorities and security forces to destroy the Palestinian group in Gaza, either wholly or in part.
A previously published report found evidence that Israeli authorities and security forces have committed four categories of acts that constitute genocide in the Gaza Strip, intending to destroy the Palestinian group in whole or in part. These acts include killing group members, causing serious bodily or mental harm to group members, and deliberately inflicting conditions of life on the group that are calculated to bring about its physical destruction, either in whole or in part.
The Commission's conclusions mirror the findings of several international human rights organizations, including Amnesty International, and the International Federation for Human Rights, as well as national organizations such as B'Tselem, and Physicians for Human Rights-Israel.
Independent human rights experts and the world’s leading genocide scholars have aloso determined that Israel's actions in Gaza constitute not only war crimes and crimes against humanity, but also genocide against the Palestinian population.
Against this backdrop, human rights groups and humanitarian organizations around the world are expressing mounting concern about the lack of accountability for Israeli military personnel and government officials accused of committing some of the worst crimes known to humanity.
Further information
Full text: Left to carry households alone: War and the rise of women-headed households in Gaza, UN Women, report, released September 8, 2026
https://www.unwomen.org/en/digital-library/publications/2026/09/brief-left-to-carry-households-alone-war-and-the-rise-of-women-headed-households-in-gaza