Foreign aid historically has severed numerous purposes, from safeguarding national security interests to supporting development efforts and providing humanitarian relief. But donors’ purposes in providing aid and beneficiaries’ perceptions of why aid is given are not always aligned. Furthermore, beneficiaries’ perceptions are not uniform across all citizens in one country, and variation in these perceptions have plausible links to attitudes on gender egalitarianism norms more generally. Using data from the latest wave of the Arab Barometer, this paper investigates how perceptions towards foreign aid vary by gender across countries in the Middle East and North Africa. Preliminary data suggests, for example, that while there is no difference between men and women in naming the goal of improving the lives of ordinary citizens as one motivation for Western countries to give foreign aid, higher shares of women than men suggest it is the main motivation for giving aid. Such differences—and similarities—between men and women’s perceptions on the main motivations of foreign aid potentially speaks to the extent to which foreign assistance programs have succeeded in increasing women’s political and economic empowerment in the region.