Middle East and North Africa

As not only one of the world’s most gender-unequal regions but also one of the most water-stressed, the Middle East and North Africa (MENA) region sees women disproportionately affected by poverty: 70 percent of the region’s 1.3 million people living in poverty are women. Although women make up over half of the agricultural workforce, they remain underrepresented in natural resource decision-making and are frequently denied land ownership, holding less than 5 percent of agricultural land across the region. This exclusion is driven by the complexity of land registration systems, limited access to information about land laws and national policies, and practices of coercion and land retention by family members. Women employed as casual agricultural workers often have little social security and are rarely protected in the face of climate-related disasters. At the same time, many head households or serve as primary breadwinners, placing them at heightened risk of losing their livelihoods. Refugees are especially affected, as agriculture is often one of the few sectors open to them. In Lebanon, for example, an estimated 50 percent of Syrian refugee women are employed in agriculture, many of whom have since lost their jobs due to heat waves, while men are more likely to migrate to urban centers in search of alternative employment. Across the MENA region, women perform 4.7 times more unpaid care work than men and face additional restrictions on their mobility due to fears of sexual and gender-based violence. Yet despite intensifying environmental stressors and mounting social pressures, MENA countries spend an average of 4.2 percent of regional GDP on the military, double the global average.