In Blockaded Gaza, Women Face a Growing Crisis of Period Poverty

Among the overcrowded streets and mounting rubble in Gaza’s central city of Deir al Balah, Amina* sits in a makeshift shelter, carefully tearing up a T-shirt, strip by strip. 

There’s no other choice. For many women and girls in Gaza, displacement, scarcity, and starvation have made one time of the month especially difficult.

“I’m on my period right now,” said Amina, indicating there were few if any options to tend to her menstrual flow. “I had to make my own pads using old t-shirt fabric and some cotton. I simply can’t afford to buy proper sanitary pads.”

For the roughly 690,000 menstruating Palestinian women and girls currently in Gaza, periods have wrought a logistical nightmare. The United Nations estimates that the population of Gaza needs around 10 million disposable menstrual pads each month to meet needs. But as aid supplies dry up due to Israel’s ongoing blockade, so have period products. 

Amid bombardment that has stretched almost 19 months in Gaza, there has been little space to understand what life is like for those on their periods, including many teenage girls who experienced their first period amid war. 

“I am new to having my period. Now, I hate that time of the month; I feel so self-conscious and sick to my stomach,” a 13-year-old Palestinian girl told UN Women. “I try to be invisible; I don’t want to be seen or heard.”

Period poverty refers to a lack of basic access to menstruation products, like period pads, tampons, or sometimes menstrual cups and reusable pads. This fallout is often exacerbated as a symptom of war, with women and girls facing constant displacement and resource scarcity. 

In Gaza, period poverty has stretched to unprecedented measures. In April, the median price for menstrual pads in Gaza was around 30 shekels ($8.30), but some areas have reported prices as high as $15, an 80 percent increase. Meanwhile, Gaza’s banking infrastructure has crumbled, with virtually no Palestinians able to access their money. Families, nearly all of whom remain displaced, have no choice but to rely on what little aid has come through the partial blockade lift. 

“[Menstrual products] are available in the market, but I have no money to buy them, and no one to help me,” Amina admitted. 

Throughout the crisis, NGOs have provided some relief for menstruating women through the regular provision of so-called dignity kits, which usually include menstrual pads, spare changes of underwear, and basic hygiene products like soap, a toothbrush and laundry detergent. But this all stopped when Israel implemented a humanitarian aid blockade in March, ending a two-month ceasefire with Hamas.

The blockade debacle has forced many menstruating Palestinian women and girls into an impossible decision: choosing between period dignity and food. 

“People now are resorting to bartering,” Hanya al Jamal, Senior Projects Coordinator with Action for Humanity, told More to Her Story from Deir al Balah. Like other Palestinians in Gaza, Hanya and her sisters stocked up on menstrual products while they could, but supplies are quickly dwindling. Now, hunger has taken precedence across the territory. “I go… [to] Facebook marketplace where I see women replacing or bartering pads for food for their kids — pads that they got from previous hygiene kits or dignity kits that they received from aid organizations,” said al Jamal. 

Al Jamal believes less than a month or two of menstrual supplies are left before everything is gone.

Earlier this month, 90 aid trucks carrying food and fuel entered the Gaza Strip for the first time in over two months—but with at least 500,000 people on the brink of starvation and at least 29 children and elderly Palestinians already dead from hunger this month alone, the relief was far from enough.

Food and medicine are a priority among such limited amounts of aid, leaving little space for other essential items like period products. Amid increasing desperation, further aid shipments are reportedly stalled. 

Riham Jafari, Communication Coordinator for ActionAid International, revealed the organization has 16 trucks of sanitary items sitting just beyond the Egyptian border. “They need only access,” Jafari told More to Her Story, adding that the situation facing women and girls in Gaza is now “catastrophic”. 

“All the aid we could deliver through the ceasefire was depleted,” Jafari added.

Women in Gaza are also disproportionately struggling with health issues, some of which stem from menstrual care shortages. Urinary tract infections (UTIs) and vaginal infections can be caused by “prolonged exposure to menstrual blood and moisture,” something many Palestinians now face, according to UNFPA. Heavier periods, sometimes brought on by increased stress, can also lead to anaemia, while indirect complications from infection can result in sepsis, infertility or death. 

It’s not just menstruating women who are impacted — of the 55,000 estimated pregnant women in Gaza, many will need sanitary pads postpartum to manage bleeding and reduce the risk of infection. A 2024 report revealed 92 percent of pregnant women in Gaza had UTIs and 76 percent struggled with anemia. It’s not unheard of for women to cut scraps of tent material to use as pads in these situations, but advocates say this is adding to health complications and psychological pressure. 

“We had many infections and many skin diseases,” Inaya*, a woman in a displacement camp near Deir al Balah, said.  “I do not know [what to say].  No matter how much we talk, we cannot express what happened to us. One is ashamed to talk about these things, but what can we do?” 

While disposable pads and tampons remain the standard in aid packages, some organizations have started including reusable menstrual care within their dignity kits, alleviating some pressure on supplies. Reemi, a nonprofit organization from New Zealand and one of the few that are providing menstrual health provisions to Gaza, sent 5,000 menstrual hygiene kits to Northern Gaza at the start of this year. The kits include a wash bag and hygiene products so women can rinse and reuse their period underwear. 

“An offering of dignity is a very, very small thing, but it's one less thing to worry about,” Reemi’s co-founder Emily Au-Young explained about the importance of developing discreet, effective, and reusable period underwear for civilians living through war. 

Speaking to More to Her Story, Au-Young said that getting such products into Gaza was logistically challenging even before the aid blockade, as the escalating conflict impacted borders and security. Through Oxfam, the products were eventually delivered through Jordan in an aid convoy and distributed. “It feels like a small relief that at least 5,000 women have access to products that will last them years,” Au-Young said. “That feels the tiniest glimmer of hope in a very, very difficult situation.” 

Reemi is now working on trying to get another shipment of period underwear in, though they’ve had to take into account some difficult realities. “Something we hadn't accounted for is the lack of food access and the impact that that could have on starvation and weight loss,” Au-Young explained, adding that they’re developing period underwear that can stretch to different sizes to accommodate this. 

But like all organizations desperately trying to support women and girls in Gaza right now in any way they can, Israeli restrictions have left the Palestinian population deeply isolated from those ready and willing to help. Jafari argued that not only is period poverty a silent struggle of women in war zones, but in this case, it’s also become a deliberate tool of war. 

“Depriving the essential item of the people deliberately is weaponizing aid,” she explained. “The essential items are a weapon of war. It is a strategy for the war,” Jafari continued, explaining that an urgent lifting of restrictions is the only option left for an incredibly desperate community. 

“It's an inconvenient time to be a woman, to be honest,” Al Jamal added. “Not that it has ever been a convenient one.”

5/29/2025 Correction: An update has been made to more accurately reflect the content of kits provided by Reemi to civilians in Gaza.