Women in India Take Fewer Precautions in Extreme Heat Than Men

The end of June saw a deadly heatwave in India: At least 96 people died from scorching temperatures, which hit 113 in consecutive days, alongside high humidity.

“So many people are dying from the heat that we are not getting a minute’s time to rest,” Jitendra Kumar Yadav, a hearse driver in Deoria town in Uttar Pradesh, told the Associated Press. “On Sunday, I carried 26 dead bodies.”

A 2022 study in The Lancet found that heat-related deaths in India have increased by 55 percent in 17 years. While it’s not clear yet how many Indian men and women have died in this current July heatwave, studies have shown that women bear the brunt of consequences from extreme heat in general. During a 2010 heat wave in Ahmedebad, more women died from extreme temperatures than men, according to a 2014 study in the journal Plos One.

Bijal Brahmbhatt, director of the Mahila Housing Trust, a development organization based in western Gujarat state, told The New Humanitarian that women in India are “‘doubly’ susceptible to heat because of the hours they spend out in the fields or inside poorly ventilated homes.”

Time magazine reports that there are about 42 million workers who produce goods or services out of their homes in India alone — the majority of them women. And Oxfam found in 2017 that 85 percent of rural Indian women were engaged in farming.

Whether outside under the blasting sun, or inside sweltering homes, women in India face unbearable heat as the climate warms.

Ronita Bardhan, a co-author of an April 2023 Cambridge study, explained to Time a lesser known reason why Indian women are more vulnerable than men to extreme heat. Apparently, they are less likely to protect themselves in high temperatures.

“Women will not do any sort of intervention unless the temperature crosses around 32 degrees Celsius [89.6 degrees Fahrenheit], whereas men will start to access any sort of cooling intervention as soon as it crosses around 28 or 29 degrees Celsius [82 or 84 degrees Fahrenheit],” Bardhan said.

This could be because women are responsible for life-sustaining work like finding water multiple times a day. But trekking a half mile or more can lead to dehydration, as can working indoors. Another reason women become dehydrated, researchers have found, is that they lack access to toilets and therefore restrict their water intake.

A woman named Sheelkumari told The New Humanitarian that she makes multiple trips to the water pump per day; some days she goes 10 times.

“Getting water in this peak heat is even more difficult, especially when I am forced to make water fetching rounds in the afternoon, when the heat is highest,” Sheelkumari said. “Taking care of the domestic chores along with this makes me feel drowsy and dehydrated the whole day.”

Fever, muscle cramps or weakness, pale or cold skin, heightened heart rate and nausea are all signs of heat exhaustion, and can lead to seizures. Temperatures in India — and around the world — have been meeting or surpassing limits at which the human body can function. But many women who live and work in unbearable heat in India don’t have the economic choice to slow or stop doing heavy labor.

“Even when I am unwell, trips for water are a necessity, and I have to do it,” Sheelkumari said.