Heat and gender: Enhancing her resilience to rising temperatures

Extreme heat is one of the deadliest natural hazards, with South Asia seeing over 110,000 heat-related excess deaths a year in the last two decades – a worrisome statistic as 2024 is shaping up to be increasingly likely to be the warmest year on record. While heat is often thought of as an indiscriminate killer, not everyone is impacted by heat equally. Women bear a disproportionate burden of heat’s physical, social, and financial effects as temperatures rise. Women are at higher risk for heat-related illness and have higher death rates than men during heat waves due to physiological differences, disparities in access to electricity and water, and social norms around women as caregivers.

Heat has a profound impact on maternal and neonatal health, with research showing links between heat exposure and pre-term births, miscarriages, and stillbirths. Furthermore, heat often creates a “double burden” for women as they are not only more physically susceptible to its effects but also tend to be expected to care for other heat-vulnerable household members, including children and the elderly. A report by HomeNet South Asia, a regional network of home-based workers, found that 43 percent of women surveyed reported an increase in caregiving due to extreme heat. Lastly, women face bigger proportional income losses from extreme heat, with female-headed households losing 8 percent more of their annual incomes when compared to male-headed households in low and middle-income countries.

The heightened vulnerability of females necessitates gender-informed heat management solutions, particularly in the following areas:

1. Women tend to have less access to information on the risks of extreme heat. According to Bijal Brahmbhatt, CEO of Mahila Housing Trust, experiential learning can empower women on concepts like heat waves, indoor temperatures, and ventilation. Through their surveillance toolkits distributed to over 25,000 households in 100 informal settlements in India, Bangladesh, and Nepal, women are trained to log data from temperature and humidity sensors three times a day, enabling a better understanding of how heat is distributed in communities. Bushra Afreen, Chief Heat Officer of Dhaka, is developing heat awareness materials with UNICEF and the Bangladesh Red Crescent Society to catalyze public engagement with heat risks and solutions in communities across Dhaka.
2.  Women are falling through cracks in existing early warning systems. In her survey of over 13,000 households in Karachi, Nausheen Anwar, professor at IBA and founder of Karachi Urban Lab, found over 50 percent had never received a heat alert of any kind despite an emphasis on early warning systems in Karachi’s heat wave management plan. Similarly, as over 40 percent of Mahila Housing Trust’s female members do not own mobile phones, MHT has directly partnered with India Meteorological Department to disseminate weekly forecast data through its meetings, posters, and radio announcements.
3. Women have limited access to cooling spaces outside the home, while often cooking in dwellings that lack fans, running water, and toilets. According to Afreen, women in Dhaka with inadequate access to sanitation services reduce water consumption to avoid having to urinate, amplifying risks of dehydration on hot days, in line with research probing why women in informal settlements were most at risk in the 2010 Ahmedabad heat wave. Therefore, Afreen is spearheading an initiative to pilot women-friendly cooling zones in Dhaka with shade, water booths, and access to bathrooms.
4. Women need financial protection from extreme heat. Brahmbhatt at the Mahila Housing Trust is piloting a parametric insurance scheme to cover heat-related income losses for women working in India’s informal sector. Insurance is paid out according to pre-set temperature thresholds, allowing members the flexibility to either work more safely or stay home in dangerous temperatures.
5. Despite being disproportionately affected by heat-related issues, women are underrepresented in positions of power that influence decision-making and policies on heat. When asked what their number one priority for alleviating the impacts of extreme heat in South Asia, Anwar answered that she would want “architects, engineers, urban planners, medical doctors, and epidemiologists to sit at the same table to have a profound conversation on what a new urban future in light of global warming trends would look like, with gender right at the heart of these conversations,” while Brahmbhatt similarly emphasized the importance of a “future where women can be part of the conversation in the public and private sectors and influence policies, governance, and budgets.”

Last April, the World Bank released a policy brief on urban heat in South Asia to foster deeper conversations on improving cities' resilience to extreme heat, with a focus on the large thermal inequities existing within cities. Rising temperatures are shedding an unmistakable light on how women bear a disproportionate burden of heat’s physical, social, and financial effects. With targeted heat management interventions that factor in gender, these risks and impacts can be reduced for South Asia’s women.