Up to 80,000 women’s jobs are at risk across five Arab economies battered by the 2026 Middle East crisis, according to a new UN brief. UN Women and the United Nations Economic and Social Commission for Western Asia (ESCWA) published the finding in late June. It is the sharpest edge of a much larger warning: the crisis could wipe out USD 194 billion in regional economic output, put 3.6 million jobs on the line, and push 4 million more people into poverty.
Most of that regional math is gender blind. It counts jobs and dollars. It does not say who holds them. The brief, titled Women’s Employment at Risk in the Arab States: Unequal Exposure to the 2026 Middle East Crisis and Implications for Policy, argues that gap matters, because women are losing ground through channels the headline numbers do not show: informal work with no contract to lose, and public payrolls being quietly starved rather than cut outright.
$194 Billion, 3.6 Million Jobs, One Region
The brief’s regional figures are scenario based, built to show a range rather than a single forecast. Across the Arab States, the 2026 Middle East crisis could cut economic output by as much as USD 194 billion, put 3.6 million jobs at risk, and push 4 million additional people into poverty. UN Women and ESCWA say the largest macroeconomic losses are concentrated in the Gulf Cooperation Council (GCC) and Mashreq subregions.
Two sets of facts sit underneath those totals: what researchers have already measured, and what they are projecting forward from here.
What is already measured:
- Informal employment among women across Egypt, Iraq, Jordan, Lebanon, Palestine and Syria ranges from 40 to 71 percent of total employment.
- Roughly half of employed women in those six countries work in education, health and public administration.
- Arab states already post the lowest female labor force participation rate of any region in the world.
What the brief is projecting:
- Up to USD 194 billion in regional output losses.
- Up to 3.6 million jobs at risk and 4 million more people pushed into poverty.
- Between 34,000 and 56,000 women’s jobs at immediate risk in five countries, near 80,000 under a high stress scenario.
The second list depends on how long the crisis’s fiscal aftershocks run. The first list reflects conditions that were already in place before a single shot was fired.
How a Four-Month War Reached Arab Payrolls
The crisis behind these numbers began on February 28, 2026, when Iran declared the Strait of Hormuz closed and struck shipping moving through it. Maritime traffic through the strait, which normally carries roughly a fifth of the world’s oil supply and about a quarter of its liquefied natural gas trade, fell from around 70 vessels a day to almost none. A ceasefire followed on April 7. Brent crude, which spiked past USD 100 a barrel during the fighting, has since eased, but the fiscal damage did not stop when the shooting did.
Iraq and Jordan moved fast to blunt the shock, reviving the Basra to Aqaba pipeline project to route crude around the strait. The wider Gulf economy still took a direct hit. The IMF’s April regional economic outlook put 2026 growth deep in negative territory for the most exposed economies.
| GCC Country | IMF 2026 Growth Forecast |
|---|---|
| Qatar | -14.7% |
| Kuwait | -4.2% |
| Bahrain | -3.8% |
| United Arab Emirates | -1.9% |
| Saudi Arabia | -1.4% |
| Oman | -0.05% |
Qatar and Kuwait rank worst because both lean hardest on Hormuz shipping lanes for exports. ESCWA had flagged how fast this kind of damage compounds even before the women’s employment brief published, warning the conflict could cut regional output by nearly $150 billion in a single month at its peak. Governments facing that kind of hole tend to close it with hiring freezes and delayed budgets, not new spending on protections for informal workers.
Where Women’s Jobs Disappear First
The brief splits women’s exposure into two channels. The first moves fast. Demand contractions in private and informal sectors could put women’s jobs at immediate risk across Iraq, Jordan, Lebanon, Palestine and Syria.
Informal workers feel this first because they have the least to fall back on. Many lack written contracts, unemployment benefits or access to social protection. When a shop, a workshop or a household employer cuts hours in a downturn, there is usually no severance and no paper trail behind the job that disappeared.
| Exposure Channel | Timeframe | Countries | Estimated Scale |
|---|---|---|---|
| Private and informal sector demand shock | Short term | Iraq, Jordan, Lebanon, Palestine, Syria | 34,000 to 56,000 women’s jobs, near 80,000 under high stress |
| Public sector fiscal tightening | Medium term | Egypt, Iraq, Jordan, Lebanon, Palestine, Syria | Hiring freezes, wage erosion and salary arrears in education, health and public administration |
That 34,000 to 56,000 range could still grow if the demand shock runs into next year rather than fading with the ceasefire.
The Quiet Erosion of Public Payrolls
The slower channel is the public sector, and it is the one UN Women and ESCWA seem most worried about. Arab women have historically clustered in government jobs, especially in health, education and public administration. Roughly half of employed women across Egypt, Iraq, Jordan, Lebanon, Palestine and Syria work in those three fields.
Governments under fiscal pressure rarely announce mass layoffs in these ministries. Mehrinaz El-Awady, ESCWA’s Acting Deputy Executive Secretary, said the public sector’s losses will not carry the drama of private sector layoffs. Instead, she pointed to:
a quiet erosion through hiring freezes, wage compression, and salary arrears
El-Awady said the fallout from that erosion is macroeconomic as well as social. Dr. Moez Doraid, UN Women’s Regional Director for the Arab States, put the underlying problem more bluntly.
“The economic consequences of crisis are never experienced equally,” Doraid said. “Women across the Arab States are already navigating some of the world’s lowest rates of labour force participation, high levels of informal work, and limited access to social protection.”
Doraid added that without deliberate measures to protect women’s livelihoods, the crisis risks reversing years of progress on women’s economic empowerment across the region.
A Workforce That Started Near the Bottom
This crisis landed on vulnerabilities that were already deep. Arab states have the lowest female labor force participation rate of any region tracked by the World Bank, at roughly 21 percent. That is despite recent gains in Gulf states, where female participation climbed above 39 percent in 2025.
Egypt sits at the sharper end of that gap, with female labor force participation near 15 percent. That makes the public sector jobs Egyptian women do hold disproportionately valuable, and disproportionately exposed if wages stall or hiring freezes lock out the next generation of applicants.
ESCWA has tracked this fragility before. An earlier ESCWA study on conflict’s shockwaves for women’s economic participation found the same pattern playing out ahead of this year’s crisis: instability hits women’s jobs before it shows up in national unemployment data.
The contrast with the Gulf’s own workforce push is stark. Saudi Arabia has spent recent years recruiting women onto factory floors as part of its Vision 2030 push, building exactly the kind of formal employment gains a wage freeze can erode. Egypt’s own economy, already flagged for growth risk tied to regional spillover channels, has less fiscal room to cushion the blow than its Gulf neighbors do.
Credit Tightens for the Region’s Women-Led Businesses
Women-led enterprises face a separate squeeze. The brief warns that tightening credit conditions during economic stress hit these businesses harder, since structural barriers to financing already make it harder for women to secure loans in calmer times.
Banks pull back on riskier lending first when a regional shock hits. Small, women-run firms in retail, food production and services are often first in line to lose credit facilities, and least able to absorb a gap in working capital. Losing that financing threatens both the jobs these firms already support and any hiring they might otherwise have added this year.
What Should Governments Do Now?
UN Women and ESCWA want governments to treat women’s job losses as a direct policy target rather than a side effect to fix later. The brief lists five measures, aimed at both the fast moving informal sector shock and the slower public sector erosion described above.
- Expand income protection and emergency support for women in informal and private sector jobs
- Protect education and health budgets from cuts that fall hardest on women’s jobs
- Shield women-led enterprises from credit tightening and financing barriers
- Stop public sector hiring freezes from disproportionately locking out young women
- Strengthen sex-disaggregated labor market monitoring so losses can be tracked as they happen
That last recommendation is the quiet admission underneath the whole brief. Sex-disaggregated monitoring makes the list because it does not fully exist yet. Right now, across five of the crisis’s hardest hit economies, tens of thousands of women’s jobs are already flagged as being on the line, and the systems built to count them are still being asked to catch up.
