The impact of war on women
War and displacement strip away many of the social, legal, and economic protections that women rely on, exposing them to layered forms of violence and discrimination. These harms do not begin with conflict, but the breakdown of institutions, displacement, and militarization intensify existing gender inequalities and create new risks.
Sexual violence is one of the most visible and devastating forms of abuse in wartime. Women and girls are raped by armed actors, militias, and sometimes members of their own communities, as a tactic of terror, punishment, or ethnic cleansing. Conflict conditions often make such violence effectively consequence-free for perpetrators: institutions that should investigate and prosecute are weakened, partial, or party to the conflict; survivors fear retaliation, stigma, or forced marriage to their assailant. Many never report, carrying the physical and psychological impacts in silence.
Intimate partner and domestic violence also tend to rise during war and protracted displacement. Stress, overcrowded living conditions, loss of income, and militarized models of masculinity can deepen controlling and violent behavior within households. Women who are displaced may find themselves trapped with abusive partners or family members in camps or temporary shelters, with even fewer exits than before and limited access to support. Displacement can sever contact with extended family or community networks that once provided some protection or recourse.
Economic violence and exploitation are another thread running through women’s experiences. Loss of livelihoods, documents, and property pushes many into precarious and informal work, where risks of harassment, assault, and exploitation are high. Women may be pressured into transactional sex to secure food, shelter, safety, or onward movement for themselves or their children. In some contexts, officials or gatekeepers controlling access to aid or services exploit that power, demanding sexual favors or other abuses of women’s autonomy.
Legal and bureaucratic discrimination compounds these harms. In many settings, laws or customary practices already limit women’s rights to own property, inherit, or pass nationality to their children. War and displacement exacerbate these barriers: women may be unable to replace lost identity documents without a male relative; registration systems may not recognize single women heads of household; or women may be excluded from decisions about land and housing when returning or being resettled. This legal marginalization leaves them and their children more vulnerable to exploitation, statelessness, and chronic insecurity.
Women also face discrimination and violence within the very systems meant to protect them. Police, security forces, or camp authorities may dismiss or blame survivors, demand bribes, or themselves be responsible for abuse. Reporting GBV can expose women to public shaming, forced “mediation” with abusers, or pressure to reconcile in the name of community harmony. For displaced and refugee women, xenophobia, racism, and class dynamics intersect with gender, shaping who is believed and who is disposable.
Finally, exclusion from decision-making is itself a form of structural violence. Women are often sidelined from peace negotiations, community leadership, and camp governance, even though they bear much of the burden of holding families and communities together. Their absence from these spaces means that the specific violences they experience—sexual and domestic violence, economic exploitation, legal erasure—are rarely at the center of how security, justice, and reconstruction are defined. In this way, war and displacement do not just expose women to more violence; they also silence their power to shape the systems that could prevent and redress that violence.
