Deprecated (16384): The ArrayAccess methods will be removed in 4.0.0.Use getParam(), getData() and getQuery() instead. - /home/brlfuser/public_html/src/Controller/ArtileDetailController.php, line: 73
 You can disable deprecation warnings by setting `Error.errorLevel` to `E_ALL & ~E_USER_DEPRECATED` in your config/app.php. [CORE/src/Core/functions.php, line 311]
Deprecated (16384): The ArrayAccess methods will be removed in 4.0.0.Use getParam(), getData() and getQuery() instead. - /home/brlfuser/public_html/src/Controller/ArtileDetailController.php, line: 74
 You can disable deprecation warnings by setting `Error.errorLevel` to `E_ALL & ~E_USER_DEPRECATED` in your config/app.php. [CORE/src/Core/functions.php, line 311]
Warning (512): Unable to emit headers. Headers sent in file=/home/brlfuser/public_html/vendor/cakephp/cakephp/src/Error/Debugger.php line=853 [CORE/src/Http/ResponseEmitter.php, line 48]
Warning (2): Cannot modify header information - headers already sent by (output started at /home/brlfuser/public_html/vendor/cakephp/cakephp/src/Error/Debugger.php:853) [CORE/src/Http/ResponseEmitter.php, line 148]
Warning (2): Cannot modify header information - headers already sent by (output started at /home/brlfuser/public_html/vendor/cakephp/cakephp/src/Error/Debugger.php:853) [CORE/src/Http/ResponseEmitter.php, line 181]
Notice (8): Undefined variable: urlPrefix [APP/Template/Layout/printlayout.ctp, line 8]latest-news-updates/how-indian-women-bear-the-brunt-of-deadly-heatwaves-indoors-and-outdoors-disha-shetty.html"/> LATEST NEWS UPDATES | How Indian women bear the brunt of deadly heatwaves -- indoors and outdoors -Disha Shetty | Im4change.org
Resource centre on India's rural distress
 
 

How Indian women bear the brunt of deadly heatwaves -- indoors and outdoors -Disha Shetty

-Scroll.in

From reduced productivity leading to lowered incomes, to dangerous indoor heat as a result of cramped conditions, extreme weather is taking its toll.

Each night, Aliya Shakir Sheikh keeps one eye fixed on her toddler and three-day-old baby. At the same time, she struggles to stay focused on work, painstakingly sticking tiny, shiny stones onto embroidered cloth by hand. Time is of the essence: the unbearable heat has already made her lose precious hours.

Sheikh makes Rs 5 rupees for each piece of cloth. Before the summer, she was completing 50 on a good day and earning up to Rs 235 a day, toiling away in a windowless one-room home in Shivaji Nagar, a slum area in Mumbai. Now, at the tail end of one of the hottest summers recorded in Indian history, she says she can barely muster the energy to finish four in a day — not enough to buy the food she needs.

By the time she breastfed her baby later that afternoon, Sheikh still hadn’t eaten all day.

“I’ve felt very anxious this summer, which is not something I’ve felt before,” she says.

Her experience is not an isolated one. A January 2022 report linked climate change to a decline in productivity among home-based women workers, like Sheikh, living in slums across South Asia.

The report, produced by HomeNet South Asia, a regional network of home-based worker organisations, found that heat waves were the most significant factor behind 43% of the women surveyed reporting a loss of cash incomes, and 41% reporting reduced productivity.

The HomeNet report also found that the heat resulted in a daily increase of over two hours of caregiving and other household work for the women, which ate further into their work time. Meanwhile, a study of excess deaths during a 2010 heat wave in Ahmedabad found significantly more women than men had died.

Please click here to read more.