As Heat Increases Women’s Vulnerability to Violence, Researchers Seek More Sensitive Policies

CHENNAI, India – Women in drought-prone areas are at a higher risk of intimate partner violence during the hot summer months, but heat action plans being drafted by cities and countries rarely account for this public health issue.

The unique vulnerability of women to intensifying climatic events such as heatwaves was at the centre of discussions at a recent conference organised by the Chennai-based research institute, MS Swaminathan Research Foundation (MSSRF).

In the hot and humid coastal city of Chennai in southern India, women farmers, grassroots organsations, academics and experts from around 32 institutions, including two United Nations (UN) agencies, shared their experiences.

“[The] key aim was to bring out issues and challenges related to women’s access to land, water and food in the context of agricultural or fisheries sectors. This included livestock, pastoralists and related occupations,” said Dr Soumya Swaminathan, the former World Health Organization (WHO) chief scientist who chairs the institute.

“We also wanted to see if there are policy gaps or blind spots that we could collectively address,” she told Health Policy Watch.

The UN has declared 2026 as the International Year of the Woman Farmers to draw attention to women in agriculture.

However, the danger is that once 2026 is over, the world will move on from the focus on women in agriculture, said Dr Israel Oliver King ED, who heads the biodiversity programme at MSSRF.

Heat and the rise in violence against women

Almost three-quarters (72% ) of women in drought-prone areas reported a rise in intimate partner violence during the summer months of April-June, according to preliminary results from an ongoing study led by researchers at MSSRF.

The study involved over 1,050 women across seven Indian states, and is part of a larger study on the impacts of heat on the health of men and women.

“Our aim is to build more evidence to touch base with the government and say, gender [vulnerability] is not a small thing,” said Dr Mohan Kumar, MSSRF’s director of health and nutrition, who is leading the study.

He explained that, while geographical and socio-economic vulnerability has always received attention, gender vulnerability has not.

“These deliberations will help us to actually pitch the importance of thinking of gender as the main rider in the climate vulnerability component,” Kumar said.

What makes women more vulnerable to climate impacts is a combination of gender roles in their home and society, limited ownership of land and limited mobility.

For instance, on a hot summer day, it is socially acceptable for men to take off their shirts to cool down but not for women, who are expected to wear several layers of clothing even in extreme heat.

Recognizing women’s role in land, food and water systems

While women do a substantial chunk of agricultural work in India, they have not been recognised as farmers by government policies or communities in the past because they do not usually own the land.

While this is now changing, women’s role as custodians of seeds and agrobiodiversity is yet to be recognized, speakers said.

Aditi Mukherji, the principal scientist of climate action at the International Livestock Research Institute in Kenya, said that women’s livestock knowledge is essentially genetic information.

As men and women often do different tasks, they notice different parts of the agricultural and livestock systems, and when women’s voices are taken into account, policies are better, Mukherji added in a virtual address to the conference

Women are often responsible for nursing sick livestock, and thus they notice climate-related signs of stress early, she added as an example.

Mainstreaming gender conversations 

Kumar also added that while conversations on how climate change is affecting women have picked up in recent years, the pace of research remains slow.

“Bringing focus on this topic is the first step in closing research or policy gaps,” Swaminathan said. “Research is needed in the gap areas and, if done in partnership with communities, can lead to meaningful and sustainable change,” she added.

Image Credits: UN Women/Ryan Brown, Unsplash/Nikita Kozlov, MSSRF.