Women Toiling in India’s Insufferable Heat Face Mounting Toll on Health

New York Times, Nov. 16, 2025, online: https://www.nytimes.com/2025/11/16/world/asia/heat-stress-women-india.html (behind a paywall for non-subscribers)

Summary

India’s extreme summer heat, with temperatures routinely exceeding 105°F and lasting for months, is creating a severe health crisis for women workers in the informal economy. These women – vegetable vendors, waste collectors, garment stitchers, and farm laborers – face impossible choices between earning their daily wages and protecting their health. Many are experiencing chronic dehydration, urinary infections, exhaustion, and other heat-related illnesses that are significantly underreported. The impact extends beyond immediate health risks: women can lose more than half their income during the hottest months when they’re forced to reduce working hours or miss days due to illness, creating cascading financial hardships for their families. Despite government awareness campaigns, public health experts warn that without comprehensive labor protections and adaptation strategies, hundreds of millions of women will continue to face deteriorating health and livelihoods as India’s summers grow hotter and longer.

“More than a billion Indians face heat waves every year. Hundreds of millions of them work in the informal sector, toiling outdoors or doing piecework in a stifling factory, and are especially at risk as intense bouts of scorching weather become more frequent and higher temperatures stick around for longer.  Public health experts estimate that many more people die of heat-related causes in India than are reported by government agencies. While deaths can be recorded as heat-related when the causes are immediately identifiable, such as a heat stroke or a cardiac arrest on a very hot day, overworked doctors are not sufficiently trained to look for longer-term effects of heat stress.”