Burning at both ends: Urban heat and the daily struggle of Dhaka’s marginalised women
As Dhaka swelters under record temperatures, women in the city’s poorest neighbourhoods face a brutal, daily struggle—trapped between unpaid care, precarious work, and suffocating heat with no escape in sight
In Dhaka's seething slums, women confined to tin houses endure an unseen inferno, managing unpaid care, illness, and precarious work with no respite from the relentless heat. Temperatures in the tin-roofed lanes of Rayerbazar exceed 42°C.
For women like Sufia Begum (pseudonym), a mother of four and part-time waste picker, the heat is not merely suffocating—it is agonising. Squatting beside a damaged fan, she exclaims, "It feels like there's a stove inside my chest. But where can I go?"
This is daily life for thousands of women living in Dhaka's slums, where neighbourhoods are transforming into ovens due to the Urban Heat Island (UHI) effect. Caused by dense development, the absence of green cover, and trapped heat, the UHI effect disproportionately affects the city's poorest.
Dhaka, one of the most rapidly urbanising cities in South Asia, now sees land surface temperatures in settlements like Hazaribagh, Rayerbazar, and Korail rise by 6–8°C above those in surrounding rural areas. For women, the consequences are especially severe.
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Most remain confined within concrete and tin sheds—cooking, caring, and working for hours in stuffy, poorly ventilated spaces. Dizziness, dehydration, and abnormal heart rates are among the signs of heat stress. In one survey, 75% of women living in Dhaka's slums reported suffering such symptoms. For them, survival is not a metaphor. Suffocation is a daily compromise.
Those who work outdoors—street vendors, domestic workers, or garbage pickers—face a different danger: direct exposure to the scorching sun, often without access to water, shade, or toilets. Despite falling ill or fainting, many feel compelled to continue working. In Hazaribagh, Fatema (pseudonym), a 30-year-old waste picker who walks 10 kilometres each day collecting plastic, explains: "I've had sores on my feet for weeks. But I can't stop. If I quit, we starve."
Heat stress is also an emerging crisis in the garment industry, where over 60% of workers are women. Factories are often overcrowded and poorly ventilated, increasing the risk of accidents and absenteeism. A 2023 survey found that 48.5% of Dhaka's informal female workers experienced financial losses during heatwaves, ranging from Tk1,200 to Tk1,800.
Most women in low-income communities cannot afford even basic cooling solutions. Only 9% of informal sector workers have access to electric fans or shaded workspaces. Healthcare is similarly out of reach—too costly, too distant, or too overcrowded. Dehydration, heatstroke, and urinary tract infections, among other heat-related illnesses, often go untreated.
In response, women rely on survival-based coping strategies, such as waking before dawn to work in cooler hours, sharing fans across households, cooling their bodies with wet saris, and crafting makeshift shaded spaces with cloth and bamboo. These practices, while resourceful, are unsustainable without external support.
Bangladesh has demonstrated policy-level commitment to climate adaptation—most recently in the National Adaptation Plan 2023–2050—but implementation rarely reaches the women whose lives these policies are meant to protect. Urban planning continues to favour "smart" infrastructure—such as reflective pavements and air-conditioned transport—while overlooking the bodies most vulnerable to extreme heat. As Korail community organiser Farzana (pseudonym) questions: "We're building green roofs for offices, but what about the tin roofs where entire families sleep?"
The intersection of gender, poverty, and urban planning must be central to any vision of health justice. This requires recognising how women's precarious employment, invisible domestic labour, and unpaid care work compound their vulnerability to global heating.
What might a cooler, fairer Dhaka look like? We can begin with practical interventions rooted in the lived realities of women like Sufia, Fatema, and Farzana: subsidies for heat-resistant roofing materials to upgrade tin homes; localised cooling shelters equipped with fans, drinking water, and rest areas for informal workers; mobile health clinics offering maternal care and treatment for heat-related illnesses; gender-sensitive urban planning that includes low-income women in decision-making; and labour protections mandating shaded rest breaks and flexible working hours during heatwaves.
As the climate crisis intensifies, Dhaka must reckon with the stark reality: not all bodies burn at the same rate. Poor women are enduring a disaster they did not create, in homes and workplaces that were never designed to protect them.
They are owed more than sympathy. They are owed recognition, response, and relief—not someday, but now.
Major Shajeda Akter Moni is an officer in the Bangladesh Army with over 22 years of service, currently serving as Deputy Director at the Research Centre, Bangladesh University of Professionals (BUP)
Disclaimer: The views and opinions expressed in this article are those of the author and do not necessarily reflect the opinions and views of The Business Standard.
