In times of crisis, economic recessions and crises have placed a disproportionate burden on women, crisis responses mostly follow a gender-blind approach, and crisis-related concerns crowd out other priorities, thus preventing action on gender-related issues.

Despite the numerous positive and encouraging initiatives and measures implemented across the region, limited attention has been given to the specific needs of women and girls and the issues they face, particularly as Arab Governments have, by and large, failed to adopt measures that specifically target women.

Unless women are included in formal institutional mechanisms and structures as part of the efforts to build back better, women will not be able to contribute to of benefit from these efforts.

Failing to mitigate the lingering consequences of the crisis on gender equality and to trigger the potential contributions of women to the recovery and build back better processes, would seriously affect the hard-won achievements so far and jeopardize the realization of SDG5.