At a time when urgent humanitarian assistance in Gaza was barely reaching one-fifth of all recipients – primarily men who could queue for it – 14,716 women-headed households were given priority food aid thanks in part to data produced by the Women Count Regional Programme for the Arab States.

“Everybody was hungry and food insecure and, at a time when it was difficult if not impossible to get food into Gaza, it was even more difficult to reach the hard-to-reach, such as women-headed households,” explains Susanne Mikhail Eldhagen, former Regional Director UN Women Arab States.* 

Within weeks of the onset of the war in October 2023, UN Women  produced a Rapid Gender Assessment (RGA), providing a preliminary analysis of food insecurity and other risks, finding that an estimated 493,000 women and girls, including 3,000 widows, were internally displaced by the conflict and facing heightened risks of food insecurity.

“Our role was to advocate to ensure that these vulnerable women were accessing that food distribution,” says Mikhail Eldhagen, noting that the data gave rise to a gender-responsive food distribution partnership that began in November 2023 between UN Women and the World Food Programme (WFP) to target these women-headed households.

The data were also used to shape UN Women’s 6-month humanitarian response plan, which has guided life-saving assistance reaching one-third of all women-headed households in Gaza and supporting the distribution of clothing, sanitary products and baby formula.

“What we have seen in Gaza with the chaos and the failure of security and the displacement patterns amid the conflict is a kind of ‘survival-of the-fittest’ where women are really pushed outside of the public sphere even more,” says Marika Guderian, Deputy Country Director for WFP in Gaza.

“We all know that women eat last, and in a situation where food is so scarce that people go days without food, women are even more vulnerable because they will deprioritize themselves to make sure everyone eats and in a famine situation, that is serious,” she adds. “The partnership with UN Women has really allowed us to have that granular level of data and understanding and specifically, based on that data, target female-headed households.”

Guderian says having this gender-specific data pushed WFP to work with bakeries to open up a dedicated women-only window for bread. “It really does translate into an impact on the ground for the women because we have that analysis and conversation with cooperating partners … Data-driven advocacy helps us to design and focus the response on the data that we have.”

A subsequent Gender Alert developed by UN Women in December 2023 further estimated that 70% of people being killed in Gaza were women and children – two mothers per hour.

These data were widely used in multiple media articles and have been integral in the design of some of the humanitarian response operations on the ground.

A few months later, UN Women produced a second Gender Alert on women’s access to vital water, sanitation and heath services, finding that more than 1 million Palestinian women and girls in Gaza are catastrophic hunger, with almost no access to food, safe drinking water, functioning toilets or running water, creating life-threatening risks.

“In Gaza, we [women] cannot meet our simplest and most basic needs: eating well, drinking safe water, accessing a toilet, having (sanitary) pads, taking a shower, … changing our clothes,” says a Gazan woman cited in that Gender Alert.

This second Gender Alert was also widely cited by media, with more than 50 news reports published or broadcast and a full infographic by CNN in Arabic.

“In addition to our continuous investment in a strong data team in the regional office, we simultaneously work with media on communicating that data. For that reason, we have embarked on a number of strategic partnerships with regional media entities in the region,” adds Mikhail Eldhagen.

Gender Alert findings have also been widely used by other UN humanitarian partners, including by WFP and the United Nations Population Fund (UNFPA), to more accurately estimate the need for menstrual pads. The second Gender Alert estimated that 10 million disposable menstrual pads or 4 million reusable sanitary pads would be required each month to cover the needs of the 690,000 women and girls of reproductive age in Gaza.

UN Women also issued a press release in May based on a survey in Rafah, Palestine, where intensified military operations have increased physical and mental despair for 93% of women interviewed. The release has been cited in more than 30 news reports.

And a third Gender Alert in June focused on the conflict’s impacts on women-led organizations – including damage to offices (89%), personnel shortages (40%) and decreased funding (56%) while highlighting their ongoing protagonism within the response.

The UN Women regional data team, working hand-in-hand with the Country Office are currently working on statistics for additional Gender Alerts on health impacts as well as protection issues brought on by the conflict in Gaza.

“It’s about being able to unveil a more multifaceted story of severe humanitarian suffering and trauma at scale,” says Mikhail Eldhagen. “We have contributed to the humanitarian response by highlighting the gender-specific needs of different groups. We continue bringing awareness and evidence, for public awareness yes, but equally for these data to be used in designing the operational response on the ground.”

^{* Susanne Mikhail was UN Women’s Regional Director for the Arab States from October 2020 to July 2024. She has since transitioned to the new global role of UN Women Director for Surging Women Employment in the Green, STEM and Care Economy.}