Female workers suffer higher levels of heat stress
Spring in the air
Putting on sun factor, shorts, sandals and tee-shirts felt strange last month while there were so few leaves on the plants where I live.
Sure enough, the Met Office confirmed that April 2025 was the UK’s sunniest, and nearly its warmest, April on record. The World Meteorological Organization also reported that “Europe is the fastest-warming continent”. India and Pakistan too experienced an abnormally hot April, with temperatures significantly above seasonal averages.
The Copernicus Climate Change Service confirmed that 2024 was the warmest year on record and the first calendar year in which the global average temperature exceeded the 1.5°C limit above the pre-industrial average set by the Paris Agreement.
Not good news for everyone
Arinite’s June 2024 International Blog noted that climate change is having a serious impact on the health and safety of a “staggering” number of workers in other parts of the world, with almost 19,000 lives lost each year due to workplace heat stress.
Mind the (gender) gap
A 3000-page IPCC report in 2024 found that women are more susceptible to the effects of climate change than men, with hormonal fluctuations related to the menstrual cycle, pregnancy and menopause all worsening their ability to regulate their body temperature – and a higher mental health burden.
A study in the Netherlands that examined mortality after various heatwaves found that elderly women are at higher risk than men. Elderly people perspire half the amount of youngsters, and females half the amount of males. In other words, the ability of older females to lose heat from the body is the lowest of any demographic group.
Recent research revealed that working in extreme heat can double the risk of stillbirth and miscarriage for pregnant women.
The impact of heat stress around the world is distributed unevenly, with southern Asia and western Africa predicted to be the most heavily affected. Across India, Nigeria and the US alone, women in the poorest two-fifths of households lose 40% to 55% more paid working hours to heat related health symptoms, than those in the wealthiest 40%, as they are more likely to work in manual jobs or outdoor settings instead of environmentally controlled conditions.
The body’s response
The “wash-in effect” is where warm and wet skin increases the absorption of chemicals. Workers are also more likely to remove or not use PPE in high temperatures, leaving them at an increased risk of other hazards.
Compulsory uniforms can put women under additional heat stress by layering workwear, PPE, etc. on top of traditional religious attire.
In developing countries, women carry a disproportionate burden of unpaid domestic labour on top of their paid work and walking long distances to collect provisions/water (where they may also face harassment/injury/trafficking).
Last year, the Asian Development Bank found that found that for every 1°C increase in average annual temperature, incidents of physical and sexual domestic violence increased by more than 6.3%.
The good employer’s response
My colleague Derek McStea’s July 2023 blog gave useful tips on the employer’s duty of care during a heatwave.
All I can add to this is to think carefully about the special needs of vulnerable people too, who may be affected by your business operations – the very young, the very old, and females.
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