Evidence Analysis:
Hot homes, school closures, low incomes, severe heat risk, agricultural pressure and rising food costs. Girls old enough to help with childcare are not at home working on schoolwork when school is closed; they are caring for younger siblings and helping with the house. Single-parent and female-headed low-income households in heatwaves show how unadapted they are to this new world of 1.5-2degrees C. Climate denial does not protect women and girls.
“My research on women in multiple low-paid employment did not examine climate change directly, but it revealed how women juggle low-paid jobs and unpaid care with little capacity to absorb unexpected shocks.
When heatwaves strike, existing inequalities are intensified and often hit women hard. As Charlotte Buxton notes in the article, women are often left to pick up the pieces created by school closures, disrupted routines and increased care demands. For families already struggling with rising living costs, keeping homes cool, travelling safely or taking time away from work can create further pressures. For those caring for children with additional or complex needs, who already face significant gaps in support, heatwaves can compound the practical, emotional and financial pressures they already experience.”
“Extreme heat has affected a large region of continental Eastern Africa since mid-February. Extreme daytime temperatures have been recorded in South Sudan, particularly affecting people in poor housing and outdoor workers, a very large part of the population.
After dozens of children collapsed with heatstroke in Juba, schools were closed for two weeks nationwide starting February 20 and the population was advised to stay indoors and keep hydrated. Both are huge challenges for many across the country as houses are often built with iron roofs, lack cooling and electricity and have limited access to clean water. In Juba, a third of the population does not have access to water, and only 1% of the city offers green space and shade for people who do not have access to cooling at home. Heatwaves are arguably the deadliest type of extreme weather event and have a large impact beyond mortality, on e.g., morbidity, agriculture, infrastructure, and economic opportunities. The death toll is often underreported and not known until months after the event, and many other impacts are not systematically assessed. Those reported so far in South Sudan only represent a very small sample of the full impacts. The impacts we do see already disproportionately affect women and girls, and widen the gap between their opportunities and those of men in an already unequal society.” World Weather Attribution
Heatwave Deaths: Differences Between Men and Women.
“Studies showed statistically significantly higher risks of death for women than men
Women appeared to have an increased risk of death associated with heatwaves in comparison to men. Further research is warranted to understand the underlying factors and ensure the health protection response considers the gendered impact of heatwaves.”
https://pmc.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/articles/PMC11516269
May 2026 broke records as the hottest ever in the UK, with temperatures reaching 35.1°C.
“These temperatures are not normal. They are being driven by climate change.
With the UN warning that global temperatures could continue to rise by up to 2.8°C by the end of this century, the impacts of these changes on our health are becoming impossible to ignore.
While we are all feeling the effects of the heat, the most vulnerable are left without support. One of these groups is pregnant women.”
https://www.rsph.org.uk/insights/how-extreme-heat-is-putting-pregnancies-at-risk
“In this cohort study, preterm and early-term birth rates increased after heat waves, particularly among socioeconomically disadvantaged subgroups. Extreme heat events have implications for perinatal health.”
“The [findings] suggest there are populations that are unable to avoid the heat and are experiencing much bigger effects,” said Lyndsey Darrow, author of the study and professor of epidemiology at the University of Nevada.
The researchers looked at 53m births that took place between 1993 and 2017 in 50 metropolitan areas of the United States. Following four consecutive high heat days, scientists found there is a 2% higher chance of premature births and 1% increase for early-term births.
“The response is higher in subgroups that you might expect to have less access to air conditioning, and less ability to avoid the heat,” said Darrow.
Preterm birth is the leading cause of death among infants, and is associated with a variety of respiratory and neurodevelopmental outcomes over the child’s lifespan. Heat can trigger premature contractions through the release of labour-inducing hormones, reduced blood flow and dehydration, which can induce early labour,” The Guardian.
Women are hit hardest in disasters, so why are responses too often gender-blind?
The statistics are staggering; when disaster strikes, women and children are 14 times more likely than men to die. Let me use a real example: of the 230,000 people killed in the 2004 Indian Ocean Tsunami, 70 percent were women.
So why aren’t responses to disaster better geared towards the specific needs of women and children?
Recognizing this gap, UNDP is working to ensure that the support we provide to countries when disaster hits is tailored to the real needs of those affected, using real-time data, and importantly, addresses the root causes of why women are so disproportionately affected in the first place.
In Mozambique, UNDP supported women in cyclone-affected communities with recovery and resilience-building activities, which they adapted and made their own. In Colombia, UNDP worked with grassroots communities to train women on water canal management, which resulted in the restoration of 900 hectares of wetlands and helped make their communities less vulnerable to climate change.
We strongly believe that improving gender equality is crucial to strengthening nations’ resilience to disasters. It is not just a human rights issue; failing to address it also undermines hard-fought development gains.
Heatwaves create more unpaid labour
So far, women and girls make up four in five people displaced by climate change, and across India, Nigeria and the U.S. alone, high temperatures are costing women $120 billion a year, mainly due to missed work hours. Higher temperatures have women, in particular, spending more time on unpaid labor—fetching water for children, for example—and less time on activities such as earning money or accessing prenatal care.
This breakdown from the Adrienne Arsht-Rockefeller Foundation Resilience Center, shows just how much rising heat can worsen women’s lives, from increased domestic labor which ticks up as temperatures rise, to economic losses when women can’t work (exacerbating an already yawning gender pay gap), to health concerns including harder-to-access care, including prenatal care, and a rise in domestic violence. The Persistent
Conclusion: Overwhelmingly, Climate Change and Natural Disasters have the greatest impact on Women and Children.
Leave a Reply