Amid the poverty and deprivation of the Gaza Strip, Palestinian women struggle to find a taste of normality that is taken for granted in much of the rest of the world. Nada Rudwan used to work in digital marketing, but as her work slowed — unemployment in Gaza stands at nearly 50 percent — she decided to put her tech skills toward one of her passions: cooking.
“It was difficult to find a job, so I thought of doing something I like and that will make me money at the same time,” said Rudwan, 27, who posts cooking tutorials to social media platforms under the name “Nada Kitchen.” Rudwan said she earns income from YouTube proceeds and that several companies in Saudi Arabia recently purchased her videos. “It is an attempt to beat the physical blockade of Gaza by finding a job that just needs some talent, a camera and internet connection,” she said.
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More than 2 million Palestinians — mostly descendants of people who were driven out or fled from territory that is now Israel at its founding in 1948 — are packed into the narrow Gaza Strip, which shares borders with Israel and Egypt. Israel maintains tight control of Gaza’s land and sea borders, citing security concerns emanating from Hamas, the Islamist group that controls the coastal territory. Egypt also restricts movement in and out of Gaza on its border.
Those restrictions have devastated Gaza’s economy and left many of its women, like Rudwan’s younger sister, struggling to find work after graduating from college. “It is hard to find a job that will allow you to take care of your needs,” said Lama Rudwan, 22, a media and communications graduate who joined her sister’s cooking-tutorial project after an unsuccessful job search.
