Women’s Economic Participation in Conflict-Affected and Post-Conflict Settings
Men are more likely to die during conflicts, but women are more likely to die from indirect consequences after conflict ends. This reminds us that the effects of war extend far beyond the battlefield. For women, conflict often brings displacement, loss of income, increased care responsibilities, limited access to services, and heightened exposure to violence. Yet women are also central to holding families, markets, and communities together during conflict, recovery, and reconstruction.
This white paper is jointly written by Women’s World Banking and the Georgetown Institute for Women, Peace and Security. Women’s economic participation is a core dimension of the Women, Peace and Security agenda. Drawing on case evidence from conflict-affected and post-conflict settings, including Colombia, Liberia, the Philippines, and Ukraine, the paper highlights how women sustain livelihoods, lead recovery efforts, and contribute to peace — while continuing to face structural barriers to finance, employment, education, safety, property, and decision-making.
Why it matters
Peace is not fully restored when violence stops. Recovery also depends on whether people can rebuild livelihoods, restore markets, access financial services, and participate in the decisions that shape their futures.
When women have access to finance, jobs, assets, digital tools, and leadership opportunities, they can better support their households, strengthen local economies, and contribute to more stable and resilient societies.
Key Insights
- Women’s economic participation is a crucial infrastructure for peace. Women keep households, markets, and communities functioning through conflict and recovery. Peace cannot be sustained without women’s full economic agency and meaningful economic participation.
- Conflict can expand women’s economic roles, but reconstruction can erase those gains. Women often become primary earners, entrepreneurs, and leaders when conflict disrupts traditional roles. In Ukraine, women founded two-thirds of new businesses registered after the war began. Yet when men return to the workforce, they may be prioritized for jobs, training, and reintegration support, while women are expected to relinquish these roles and are pushed back into lower-paid or informal work. Unless recovery frameworks deliberately protect and build on women’s wartime gains, reconstruction risks reinforcing the very inequalities that conflict temporarily disrupted.
- Women peacebuilders cannot sustain peace while struggling to survive. Poverty ranks among the three most pressing challenges identified by women peacebuilders, and women and girls in extremely fragile settings are 7.7 times more likely to live in extreme poverty. Economic security gives women the time, mobility, and resources to continue leading peacebuilding and recovery.
- The barriers are interconnected, so isolated interventions will fall short. Violence, discriminatory norms, unpaid care, disrupted education, insecure land rights, limited finance, and unsafe or inaccessible technology reinforce one another. Effective recovery must combine financial services with safety, rights, care infrastructure, skills, and women’s leadership in program design.
- The global response must move from recognition to resourcing. Women, Peace and Security receives only 2.6 percent of global overseas development assistance, and just 3.1 percent of that reaches local women’s rights and women-led organizations. Policymakers, donors, and financial institutions should fund women as economic agents and align women’s economic participation with peacebuilding goals.
Listen to the Podcast
For a deeper conversation, listen to the Making Finance Work for Women podcast as Mary Ellen Iskenderian speaks with Ambassador Melanne Verveer of the Georgetown Institute for Women, Peace and Security. Together, they discuss why women’s economic participation must be treated as a core pillar of the Women, Peace and Security agenda, and why recovery efforts must move beyond recognition to meaningful investment and action.
