Heat Inequality

In India, extreme heat is no longer just a seasonal hardship; it is a growing public health crisis, one that disproportionately affects women working in the informal sector. As climate change accelerates, studies show that female mortality linked to heat has risen steadily. The reasons lie not in biology, but in unequal access to resources, mobility, and autonomy.

​

Women, particularly those employed as domestic workers, agricultural laborers, street vendors, and brick kiln workers, often spend hours laboring under the direct sun, exposed to punishing temperatures with little or no protection.

​

Yet their vulnerability does not end when the workday is over. As highlighted by Greenpeace India, these women return home only to face a “double burden”: inside their houses, the temperature frequently remains above safe thresholds, offering no respite from the heat and causing multiple health problems, including severe skin and urinary tract infections, chronic headaches, heat stroke, dehydration, cardiovascular diseases, and sleep disturbances.

​

Most live in cramped, poorly ventilated dwellings, often with tin or concrete roofs that absorb and retain the day’s heat, especially in urban neighborhoods affected by the heat island effect, where concrete and asphalt further intensify and prolong high temperatures.

​

Many are forced to cook in small, unventilated spaces without access to fans or air conditioning. At night, sleep is often elusive: entire families, sometimes five or six people, crowd into single rooms where the heat lingers well into the early morning hours.

This chronic exposure, both at work and at home, compounds health risks and leaves women with few opportunities to recover, making the impacts of extreme heat even more acute and persistent in their lives.

Surveys from organizations like Arsht-Rock and studies published in Significance Magazine highlight how these women face increased risks without access to heat mitigation tools or the power to make adaptive decisions.

​

These conditions reveal a critical blind spot in climate adaptation strategies: the lived realities of millions of working women who remain excluded from planning, policy, and protection.

As heatwaves become more frequent and severe, their experiences must be central to understanding how climate risk is distributed and to designing responses that are both equitable and effective.