Communities, including the potential workforce, need skills and entrepreneurship to get back on their feet. Although the consequences of war affect all population groups in a country, women bear a disproportionate burden. Women constitute the bulk of the internally displaced and refugee populations during armed conflict and of the general population in its aftermath. An imbalance in sex ratio is often created, with women outnumbering men, leading to changes in family composition and gender relations within households, including an increase in the number of female-headed households. Migration increases, leading to a weakening or complete breakup of the extended family, denying households the security this formerly provided.
Dramatic changes occur in women's roles and in the general sexual division of labour.
War and postwar situations often create non-traditional tasks for women in addition to their traditional roles, to ensure survival of the family and other dependants. They must also face demanding psychological and physical burdens. Both during war and in its aftermath, women face reproductive, health care and psycho-social problems, often resulting from rape and other sexual abuses, as well as unsanitary birth conditions. The impact on the young and the disabled War poses adult problems for huge numbers of children and adolescents. Child victims of war include child soldiers who have seen more death and destruction than many adults, orphans for whom foter families can never be found, and the young who cannot return to their original communities and, out of desperation, may become street children.