Inside Gaza’s ‘widows camp’, where women now support their families alone
Tareq S. Hajjaj writes in Mondoweiss on 25 September 2026:
At al-Baraka displacement camp in Khan Younis, 42-year-old Amani al-Hamaida sits alongside 30 other women learning how to embroider by hand. The initiative was set up inside the camp to teach women a skill they could turn into a source of income, however small.
What brings the women together is not only embroidery. Each of the women has lost the man who once helped support her family, a husband killed during the war, detained, or missing with no known fate. They have been left to raise their children and find ways to feed them amid the devastation of Gaza.
**** ****
A recent brief by UN Women found that women now head nearly one in four households in Gaza, representing some 86,290 households, or 23% of all households in the Strip. The figure includes women whose husbands are missing, detained, separated from them, or whose whereabouts remain unknown, as well as women caring for husbands who have been severely injured or disabled and can no longer perform the roles they previously held within their families.
The consequences extend far beyond a change in who is considered the head of the household. Women-led families, the UN Women report found, face overlapping obstacles in securing necessities, finding shelter, reaching humanitarian assistance, staying safe, and maintaining their basic needs. The analysis also confirmed that women-headed households were more likely to report facing both unmet cash needs and movement restrictions, which make it difficult for them to access aid distributions or registration systems intended to support them.