by Pooja Kori, Benu Verma, Ranjitha Puskur
As global temperatures rise, heat stress has become a significant concern with varied effects on agricultural production, human health and productivity, and sustainability. Heat stress threatens food security and can exacerbate existing social and gender inequalities. Seventy percent of global agriculture will be exposed to the risk of heat stress by 2045. Smallholder farmers, who account for 85% of farmers globally, face heightened challenges owing to inadequate resources and a lack of adaptive strategies to combat extreme heat. Workers, especially those working outdoors, like farmers, face serious health and safety risks because of rising temperatures. Prolonged heat exposure can lead to health issues such as heatstroke, organ damage, and cognitive impairments, significantly reducing working capacity and increasing fatalities.
The effects of heat stress are compounded for rural women due to their social status, cultural norms, and economic disparities. Due to the physiological constitution of women, they are 3.7 times more likely to experience heat intolerance than men. Restrictive clothing norms, limited access to cooling resources (such as shaded areas, cool drinking water, cooling devices like fans or air conditioning), and sociocultural barriers to healthcare exacerbate their vulnerability. These challenges posed by heat stress could widen existing gender gaps, making working conditions worse for the many women in subsistence agriculture. Yet, rural women’s unique challenges remain largely underexplored in heat stress management efforts, leaving critical gaps in addressing their needs and building resilience for this vulnerable group.
The Evidence Module of CGIAR GENDER Impact Platform, led by the International Rice Research Institute (IRRI) in partnership with Awaas Sewa Pvt. Ltd (ASPL), conducted three workshops between August and October 2024 with women farmers from two villages of Ganjam, a coastal district in southern Odisha, India. Around 80% of people in Ganjam depend on agriculture and allied activities for their livelihoods. However, climate change exacerbates farmers' vulnerabilities, with recurring droughts, dry spells, and erratic rainfall patterns affecting crop yields.
The three workshops engaged around 50 farmers to enhance their capacities to cope with the challenges brought by climate change, such as the increased risk of heat stress in women farmers. These interactive workshops introduced key concepts and encouraged women to share their experiences, perspectives, and the solutions they could envisage for the climate challenges.
Building awareness of heat stress among women farmers
The first workshop helped participants gain a foundational understanding of how climate change affects their daily lives and agricultural productivity. Women identified prolonged heatwaves as the most severe climate change effect, significantly impacting their everyday lives and livelihoods. The effects were compounded if their husbands and sons migrated for work, leaving them to manage farming and household responsibilities alone.
The women woke up early to prepare meals for the family to avoid the intense mid-day heat while cooking with firewood. As their mornings were spent indoors, women often worked in the fields during the hottest hours, exposing themselves to extreme heat. Fetching water and firewood from a distance under the scorching sun added to their burden. Women often experienced headaches, dizziness, exhaustion, and skin and eye irritation while working on the farms under hot conditions. This daily farm and domestic work led to chronic fatigue, exacerbated by inadequate rest at night because of high heat, humidity, frequent power outages, and mosquito bites.
The women farmers rated the transplanting stage of paddy cultivation during May–June as the most challenging period, followed by weeding in August - both involving long hours of physically strenuous and back-breaking work in the paddy fields under the scorching sun. Even during the harvesting period in November–December, though not typically associated with high temperatures, women reported discomfort from the combined effects of heat and humidity while harvesting paddy. This highlights the need for appropriate machines and tools for transplanting and weeding to reduce the time and physical burden of women during these intense heat stress periods.
Community-Based Vulnerability Assessment
The second workshop introduced the participants to the Community-Based Vulnerability Assessment Tool (CBVAT), developed by the Mahila Housing Trust (MHT). This tool helped women farmers assess their climate vulnerabilities and coping strategies. They identified increased frequency of heatwaves, water scarcity during critical crop stages, and declining productivity due to erratic rainfall as key climate vulnerabilities. Adjusting work hours to avoid mid-day heat exposure on the farms, increasing water and other liquid consumption during summer times, and using cooling devices in homes, such as fans and small coolers, were some strategies they mentioned. Women discussed practical solutions they could adopt in their communities, like planting trees for shade near their houses and farms, improving house ventilation, and creating small and temporary rest areas in or near agricultural fields. They prioritized adaptive strategies such as transitioning to climate-resilient crops, adopting water-saving technologies, and advocating for better health and sanitation resources.
Heat stress management strategies for women farmers
The third workshop focused on practical solutions for managing the challenges posed by extreme heat. It aimed to raise awareness of the health risks associated with heat stress and equip women to use practical tools and strategies to safeguard themselves, their families, and their agriculture.
Participants learned about technologies, such as solar-reflective paints, ModRoof, Bamboo Roofing, Green Roofing, and Thermocool Insulation, to reduce indoor temperatures. Women learned about installing cost-effective cooling stations near or on farms that can be constructed with local materials. In a hands-on session, women farmers learned how to install and navigate the Satark app, a disaster preparedness mobile application developed by the Odisha state government, to access real-time temperature data, weather alerts, and preventive measures for heat stress.
Charting a path toward resilience
By eliciting the traditional knowledge and lived experiences of women farmers, increasing their awareness about other strategies, and providing expert guidance, these workshops have laid the foundation for building their resilience to heat stress. They raised awareness about the health risks of heat stress and provided actionable tools and resources to mitigate its impact. This is only the first step in the path forward. There is a need to develop and implement Heat Action Plans (HAPs) for rural areas, which go beyond just health-related advisories to include actionable advisories and decision support for managing agricultural enterprises (including crops, livestock, and fish) based on a sound understanding of the seasonal calendars, to mitigate the negative effects of heat stress.