Women in India forced to cope with indoor heat, requiring adaptation and solutions

Daily struggle with heat

Her work in Sawda Gehra, a settlement in northwest Delhi, begins at 6 am by preparing food for her husband. When the afternoon sun scorches the building's tin roof, she continues to prepare fresh rotis for the children returning from school. Last September, a thermal imager recorded a surface temperature of 36.5°C in Kanchan's house, and this was before the peak of summer. In May of this year, the temperature in the city reached almost 45°C, and the hottest night recorded in Delhi over 14 years exceeded 32°C.

Kanchan explains her continuous work with the question: 'If I don't cook, who will?' At night, the relief is minimal; 'even around bedtime it feels like it's still daytime,' she says. Although her son desires an air conditioner, she objects, saying, 'where would I get the money, and besides, the house is too small.'

Situation in neighboring settlements

In Kishan Kundji, located about 50 km east of Sawda Gehra, most families have migrated from other states and earn a living selling used clothes and utensils. Reshma and Manisha, young women who care for families in this settlement, face the same relentless heat as Kanchan. Their dwelling does not even have brick walls like Kanchan's; its sides are made of woven mats. In the evening, when the outdoor temperature drops slightly, Reshma's and Manisha's brothers go out to socialize with friends or simply get away from the suffocatingly hot house.

However, Reshma and Manisha remain inside because women regularly face harassment in public places in Indian cities and informal settlements, street lighting is poor, and public spaces are dominated by men in the evening. Reshma notes: 'It is unsafe for us outside, and we generally don't go out much.'

Common problems and adaptations

On average, women in India, regardless of education level or marital status, spend 46% of their waking hours on unpaid care work, which is eight times more than men. Indian cities are rapidly heating up and becoming denser, and women at home feel this impact. In many cases, they devise their own ways of adapting, trying to make their lives somewhat more tolerable, but experts and the affected women themselves believe that deep solutions remain distant.

Limits of heat adaptation

As of 2022, about 40% of the urban population in India lived in informal settlements where protective measures against extreme heat were limited. Access to electricity for running refrigerators, fans, and coolers is also difficult, as connections are often informal or shared. Where power supply reaches households, it is often unreliable; two out of five urban Indian households experience unplanned power outages at least once a day, and this figure can be significantly higher in poor, informal settlements.

Purchasing and operating cooling devices is often prohibitively expensive. The price of air conditioners increased by 5–15% shortly before this summer, and studies in the informal settlements of Mumbai show that low-income households often forgo using cooling devices to control electricity bills.

Sawda Gehra, where Kanchan lives, was created for families evicted from informal settlements across Delhi, who were given land on which many gradually built permanent homes. Four years ago, Kanchan bought a refrigerator after saving some money from part-time work delivering electricity bills around the city—a job she takes after fulfilling her caregiving duties. She considers this purchase expensive but necessary, as without it, food spoils quickly, further complicating the management of her already limited food budget.

Furthermore, her heat adaptations are small and daily: she wakes up earlier to cook; takes breaks every couple of hours; wets a cloth for her head and sits in front of a fan; and drinks a fermented milk drink to restore hydration and maintain strength. She notes that these are not practices she grew up with. However, a new house appeared nearby a few years ago, blocking the remaining air reaching her dwelling. 'It started to feel suffocating inside. A feeling of suffocation began,' she says. These adaptations became a consequence. But personal methods of adaptation have limits, and for women, this limit is often lower than for men.

Social and physiological barriers

Robert Mead, a researcher from the Harvard School of Public Health in the United States, states: 'Physiology regarding heat does not differ much. The limit is determined by the home, gender, and responsibilities. These are cultural norms and social reasons that limit women's ability to adapt to heat.'

He mentions that while studying the impact of heat on women in Gujarat, a state in western India, his colleagues recommended taking breaks and avoiding work during the hottest hours of the day. However, according to him, this is 'not really an option for them' due to caregiving duties.

Mead compares the situation to people struggling in water, saying: 'You hand them a brick. They won't drown, but it makes the simplest tasks difficult.'

Problems in Mumbai: building density

About 1400 km south of Sawda Gehra is the Dharavi Coliwada area in Mumbai. Estimates suggest that one million people live here, crowded into an area of 2.6 sq km. Here, the problem of construction takes a different form, but the consequences of heat most strongly affect women again.

The settlement has grown rapidly in recent years, often by adding upper floors and dividing rooms. This has changed not only people's lifestyles but also how air moves—or doesn't move. Mary, whose family belongs to the Koli, one of the area's original fishing communities, recalls: 'There used to be a stream here. It was open, there were no tall buildings, and the air flowed. Now everything is built up. New floors are added every year.'

Her neighbor Devyani cooks on a gas stove in a kitchen that once had windows on three exterior sides, but now all three sides have the wall of someone else's house. She says, 'If we break down this wall, there is another house there, we cannot put in a window, and it becomes suffocating.'

After cooking, she sits in the stairwell of her dormitory, which is only slightly cooler than the kitchen. Both Mary and Devyani describe an inversion that has become routine and accumulated over years. There was a time when coming home meant entering the shade and relative coolness, when a breeze from the estuary reached the alleys, and the area was not completely sealed by concrete on all sides. Now stepping onto the main road brings relief.

Conflicts and architectural solutions

Increased density in Dharavi has also turned cooling into a source of conflict among neighbors. Several women report that hot exhaust from the air conditioners of wealthier neighbors is directed straight into their homes. Devyani shares: 'The houses are so close that someone's air conditioner blows hot air directly into our house from in front of our window. We cannot say anything because they are rich.'

Regarding kitchen work, the issues are gendered. Devyani jokes that her husband never cooked in their overheated, windowless kitchen: 'But you can't say that out loud.'

Mukta Naik, an architect, urban planner, and employee of Collaborative for Sustainable Futures, explains that the problem is rooted in the built environment itself: 'Historically, urban planning in India did not take seriously the use of domestic space by women. Homes as a whole were never designed to facilitate domestic labor; the kitchen was often located outside so smoke could escape. The time women spend in the house is almost never taken into account.'

Naik emphasizes that improved ventilation would help, and this refers not only to cross-ventilation but also to vertical ventilation, providing paths for hot air to rise and exit buildings. 'Vertical shafts with mechanical extraction can be installed where horizontal through-ventilation and windows are impossible,' she explains. This can be modernized in existing structures and simultaneously solve problems of heat and indoor air pollution.

There are also passive solutions that do not require fans or electricity. A 2021 study in a low-income single-room apartment in Andheri East, Mumbai, examined a relatively inexpensive solution. Using computer modeling, researchers tested installing a small pipe on the roof of the house, one side painted black to attract heat, and the other made translucent to let in light. The results were promising: the modeled pipe extracted enough hot air to reduce the room temperature by 3–4°C.

However, modernization is unlikely to be initiated by the government. Naik points out that these are self-built settlements, and India has a poor track record regarding the modernization of informal settlements in any form. 'A more realistic path is private implementation at the household level—people modernize their homes if they receive technical support and financial assistance for repairs.'

Naik also believes that subsidized cooling devices, standardization of equipment to reduce costs, and incentives for industry to produce affordable cooling appliances will help.

Uneven distribution of comfort

Even in households with air conditioners, cooling is distributed unevenly. Mumtaz, a resident of a recently renovated house in Sawda Gehra, recently bought an air conditioner because 'the cooler doesn't work during monsoons, and the body gets sticky.' However, the device only turns on after her son returns home in the evening and then runs all night. The hours before that, when her daughter-in-law cooks and cleans during the day, pass without it. Starting it earlier would cost more than the household can afford. Mumtaz is also pragmatic about another reason: men work hard outdoors, and the house must be cool when they return.

Health consequences of heat

Heat causes more than just discomfort. In Delhi and Mumbai, women describe how prolonged exposure to indoor heat damages their health, but the accumulation of symptoms is rarely recorded in medical charts. In Sawda Gehra, there is no nearby government hospital; there is a small clinic and one private doctor for families who can afford it.

Reshma reports that her blood pressure drops while cooking during the hottest hours of the day, causing dizziness and vomiting. Manisha speaks of nosebleeds caused by the heat. Another woman in Mumbai describes waking up after a night of disturbed sleep with swollen legs—one of the signs, as she understands, that the heat has crossed a threshold. A 2024 study covering 10 Indian cities, including Delhi and Mumbai, found that heatwaves were associated with a 14.7% increase in daytime mortality and estimated over 1100 heatwave-related deaths annually in the studied locations. However, official mortality data in India is understated and poorly tracked, failing to reflect the illness experienced by many women in low-quality urban homes.

Resident Zarina describes constantly wetting her clothes while cooking to cool down. But clothing is part of the problem. 'Wet clothes caused a rash all over my body,' she says. Gender norms require her to be fully covered during the day, whereas men usually wear tank tops or go shirtless at home and in public areas, especially in summer. Savita, another housewife in the same area, says she opens the refrigerator and sits in front of it during the hot afternoon hours. 'My husband scolds me for wasting cold air,' she laughs, 'but if the refrigerator were bigger, I would sit inside it.'

Thus, the crisis of indoor heat in India is managed through personal efforts and adaptations.