Gender & Women's Rights Crises in 2026

Women and girls in Gaza remain in a **severe gendered humanitarian emergency** driven by mass displacement, collapsing health and sanitation systems, and restricted humanitarian access. UN Women reported in April 2026 that **more than 38,000 women and girls** had been killed since October 2023, **nearly 11,000** had been injured, and many had been displaced multiple times; the agency also said **nearly 790,000 women and girls** in Gaza were facing crisis-level food insecurity or worse, and **over 540,000** lacked access to reproductive health care. UNFPA reported in 2025 that **46,300 pregnant women** were facing crisis levels of hunger, **155,000 pregnant and breastfeeding women** were struggling to access antenatal and postnatal care, and **690,000 menstruating women and adolescent girls** needed about **10.3 million menstrual pads per month**. UNFPA also said it had distributed **6.1 million menstrual pads** and **50,800 hygiene kits** since the war began, while the Gaza crisis remained constrained by shortages of transport, ambulance access, soap, toilets, and private wash facilities. The crisis has worsened since renewed blockade conditions and continued military operations caused further aid collapse in 2025, deepening hunger, disease risk, and protection threats for women and girls. UN and humanitarian reporting also identifies **pregnant and breastfeeding women**, **women heading households**, and **survivors of gender-based violence** as especially affected, with widespread displacement and damaged water, sanitation, and health infrastructure across the Gaza Strip.

Since the Taliban returned to power in August 2021, Afghanistan has seen a sustained and expanding system of restrictions that has stripped women and girls of access to education, paid work, movement, political participation, and many public services. Recent reporting and human-rights advocacy describe these policies as an institutionalized regime of gender apartheid, with women from Hazara and other religious minorities facing compounded discrimination. The crackdown has deepened rather than eased. Amnesty International reported that women and girls were blocked from education beyond age 12, from working with UN agencies, NGOs, and state institutions, and from exercising basic rights to movement and expression, while the Taliban also imposed corporal punishment and other abusive penalties. Human Rights Watch reported in 2025 that the Taliban had banned education beyond sixth grade, imposed harsh restrictions on women’s paid employment, and enforced restrictive dress and chaperone rules; academic analysis in 2025 and 2026 described more than 100 edicts and a formalized system of control over nearly every aspect of women’s lives. In July 2025, the ICC issued arrest warrants for Taliban leader Hibatullah Akhundzada and Chief Justice Abdul Hakim Haqqani for persecution on gender grounds, underscoring the international legal response to what Afghan women’s rights defenders call gender apartheid.

Saudi Arabia has expanded women’s legal autonomy in some areas, including allowing women over 21 to obtain passports and travel abroad without a male guardian’s permission and to register births, marriages, and divorces. However, the broader male guardianship framework remains embedded in Saudi family law, and rights groups say it continues to shape women’s lives in marriage, divorce, custody, and some access-to-justice settings. The most recent major legal update came on 21 February 2025, when Saudi Arabia published implementing regulations for the Personal Status Law. Equality Now says these regulations strengthened certain protections by allowing courts to override an unreasonable guardian’s objection to marriage and letting women seek transfer of guardianship from an unjust or negligent guardian, including in some cases without a prospective suitor present. Even so, Amnesty International, Human Rights Watch, and USCIRF continue to describe the system as discriminatory in practice, noting that women still face guardian-linked restrictions around marriage and other family-law matters, and that the law continues to privilege male guardianship in key areas.

Since *Dobbs*, abortion access in the United States remains highly fragmented by state law, and recent evidence shows the restrictions are harming broader reproductive and pregnancy care. Harvard public health experts say abortion bans do not eliminate need for care; they instead increase barriers, clinician stress, burnout, and provider exits from reproductive health fields. Guttmacher reports that post-*Dobbs* restrictions are also affecting contraception access and overall reproductive autonomy, with ripple effects across care systems. As of the latest available sources in 2026, restrictive state laws continue to constrain timely access through bans, gestational limits, travel burdens, and delays in miscarriage and emergency pregnancy care. Research summarized by the Milbank Quarterly found that clinicians in ban states report new constraints on miscarriage and pregnancy-emergency care, while reproductive-access organizations report worse maternal-health outcomes, including higher maternal mortality in more restrictive states and larger racial disparities. The main current policy risk is further restriction of medication abortion, telehealth, and federal enforcement theories involving the Comstock Act, which advocacy and policy groups warn could be used to curtail abortion pills and related supplies nationally.

Iran’s compulsory hijab enforcement remains an active nationwide gender-rights crackdown. The UN Office of the High Commissioner for Human Rights reported in April 2024 that police were carrying out a violent campaign against women and girls across Iran, including widespread arrests and harassment, many girls aged 15–17, and the use of surveillance cameras to identify women drivers who did not comply. The same UN briefing said hundreds of businesses had been forcibly closed for failing to enforce hijab rules, and that a draft bill was nearing approval with harsher penalties including prison terms, flogging, and fines. More recent reporting indicates the enforcement strategy has shifted rather than ended. Human Rights Watch said in its World Report 2026 that authorities continued to enforce compulsory hijab in 2025 through prosecutions, vehicle impoundments, business closures, and digital surveillance, while the law remained suspended but not repealed. The Center for Human Rights in Iran reported that at least 50 establishments were sealed between late June and early October 2025 for “improper hijab,” with closures, undercover agents, and surveillance increasingly replacing visible street patrols, especially outside Tehran. Amnesty International and UN experts also reported that the 2024 hijab law introduced or codified severe penalties, including long prison terms, fines, flogging, and in some cases the death penalty for related offenses, underscoring that the legal basis for enforcement remains in force.

Saudi Arabia has made partial reforms to its male guardianship framework, but women still face legally and socially enforced restrictions in family law, child guardianship, incarceration-related release procedures, and some healthcare decisions. Human Rights Watch says the 2022 Personal Status Law formally enshrined male guardianship by requiring women to obtain a guardian’s permission to marry and by keeping fathers as default guardians of children, while other restrictions persist despite earlier reforms on passports and travel. Recent reporting and rights-monitoring sources continue to describe the system as a major barrier to women’s autonomy. The UN’s independent rights experts said in 2019 that women still faced numerous restrictions after the travel reforms, including permission requirements to marry and leave shelters, and that more action was needed to fully dismantle guardianship controls. USCIRF also reported that Saudi law and practice have historically restricted women’s travel, marriage, university attendance, and access to medical care, with some reforms not fully eliminating the system.