With little water or power,
Pakistan’s women endure harsher heat
By Imran Mukhtar
Worsening heat extremes in northwest Pakistan have proved a headache - literally - for Ali Bagh Jana this summer.
Power outages that can last for 18 hours a day mean using a fan to cope with the 40 degree Celsius (104 degree Fahrenheit) heat is often impossible in her village of Bara Chashmai, more than a four-hour drive southwest of Peshawar.
A combination of heat and water shortages have left her daughter-in-law and her eight grandchildren facing heat rashes, skin allergies and other heat-related problems. Addressing those ailments, at a nearby private clinic, has eaten up most of Jana’s income.
Increasingly, she finds herself tired and battling headaches, especially when sleep at night is difficult in the unrelenting heat.
Heat and drought have also worsened existing water shortages in her village, not only forcing her family to cut back on showers and laundry but slashing her harvests of okra, pumpkin and tomatoes by a third as a nearby dam runs increasingly dry.
“My crops are like my grandchildren and it pains me a lot seeing them damaged,” she said, plucking a few okra pods on the land she works by herself, into her 60s, now that her husband has migrated from the village to work at a private construction firm.
Pakistan has long faced hot summers, but rapidly growing extreme heat driven by climate change is making life much harder and more costly for many people, including those living in Khyber Pakhtunkhwa province, where Khwendo Kor, a non-profit women’s development group, operates.
A survey by the organisation of 40 residents in four communities, carried out earlier this year, found that more than half now see heat as the climate extreme that is creating the most health problems in their area, with heatstroke and skin infections prominent issues.
Two-thirds of those surveyed said their communities were not prepared for growing health problems associated with climate change impacts, including worsening heat.
“Our close work with the communities has made us acutely aware of the challenges and hardships they face, especially women and children, due to growing heat impacts,” said Daimeen Gul, who managed the survey as deputy director of programs at Khwendo Kor.
She urged quick action to support and protect vulnerable groups from worsening extreme heat, explaining that problems such as lack of education, high unemployment and social marginalisation currently limit their ability to adapt effectively. Limited access to safe drinking water, healthcare and other essential services also are problems, she said.
This summer, temperatures in some parts of Pakistan have risen above 52 degrees Celsius (125 degrees Fahrenheit). But cities and villages in Khyber Pakhtunkhwa province, where Jana lives, now also regularly sizzle above 40 degrees Celsius in the May to July peak summer months, according to the Pakistan Meteorological Department.
That heat stress threatens “the very fabric of livelihoods and human potential” in Pakistan, the country’s 2023 national climate adaptation plan said, noting that the percentage of Pakistan’s households that are food insecure could climb from 40 percent to 60 percent by 2050, as climate impacts grow.
A heatwave in early April this year cut harvests of maize, chickpea, cauliflower and garlic in Khyber Pakhtunkhwa province by 30 to 40 percent, said Muhammad Arif, a professor of agronomy at the University of Agriculture in Peshawar.
hotter and sicker
In Tehsil Domel, near Jana’s home, rising temperatures are already leading to a surge in heat-related illnesses, said Dr. Sohrab Khan, the medical officer at the town’s rural health centre.
“The scale of extreme heat has increased in the area in the last couple of years and we receive up to 25 patients daily with heat exhaustion and heat stroke, and children suffering heat rashes,” he said.
Many other people battling heat-related illness go directly to a larger hospital in Bannu, the district capital, he said, emphasizing that a disproportionate number of those affected by the heat-related illnesses are women.
“They are more exposed to heat in this area because they live in strict purdah and congested places and are not allowed to go outside due to cultural restrictions,” he said.
Taj Bibi, for instance, lives in a village near Jana’s and passes sleepless nights in her sweltering home without electricity to run a fan, while male members of the family sleep outside.
“Unlike men, women in our culture cannot go outside to sit under the trees in the open sky to get some respite from the heat. They have to remain confined to their homes,” the 74-year-old said.
Even her animals - a cow and a goat - are increasingly suffering from the heat and a lack of adequate shade at the family’s compound, she noted.
She said the relentless high temperatures make working, or even thinking, difficult.
“In extreme heat my heart sinks, my mind stops working and I usually give up,” she said, explaining that her only relief is to apply henna to her hands “to give myself a cool feeling” while it dries.
Women in Pakistan - and more broadly around the world - face a range of gender-specific threats from heat, from restrictions on their ability to go outside to clothing that covers much of their body and can restrict airflow. Shortages of water and electricity add to the threat, experts in Pakistan say, as do traditional roles, with women often in charge of cooking and carrying water.
“Women engaged in household tasks such as cooking are often exposed to high temperatures in poorly ventilated kitchens. A lack of adequate cooling mechanisms intensifies their heat burden and the situation is further exacerbated by frequent power outages,” said Muhammad Toheed, associate director at the Karachi Urban Lab of the Institute of Business Administration.
psychological impacts
The rising heat has psychological as well as physical impacts, women say.
Zarghona Ali, 26, an Afghan refugee married to a Pakistani man, lives in a small two-bedroom house in the crowded Afghan Colony area of Peshawar, where streets are so narrow that only pedestrians or bicycles can pass.
She said the worsening heat in her home was prompting more disputes with her husband, who had greater options to cool himself.
“I usually enter into an argument with my husband because he doesn’t allow me to go to the rooftop during power outages in the night,” she said, sitting in a dark and airless room in her house. "I am facing this restriction because male family members of adjacent houses sleep on the rooftops.”
“The hot season is frustrating for me because I am confined to my home, have to cook food for the family and press clothes for my husband,” she added.
The heat is also cutting into her income, Ali said. She runs jewelry-making classes at her home for other women, mainly young Afghan refugees, but her last electricity bill, for the month of June, came to 16,000 Pakistani rupees ($57) as the heat boosted her need to run fans and an air cooler.
The higher power bills to battle the heat now amount to half her monthly income, she said.
Ali said she hoped better early warnings in advance of heatwaves could be sent through mobile phones, allowing families and businesses to plan better for them. Currently, most residents are unaware of when heatwaves will hit, she said.
Toheed, of the Karachi Urban Lab, said Pakistan has good meteorological data to build such warnings but their impact might be limited because heatwaves are not yet recognised as a disaster by disaster management authorities - a common problem around the world - and local officials often lack the resources and funding to act on warnings.
Jana said another way to reduce worsening heat threats would be for governments to provide communities and households with free solar panels, storage batteries and inverters, and to build more tube wells capable of extracting underground water, as well as water storage tanks.
“We need an uninterrupted supply of usable and clean drinking water and power to make our lives easy in this heat,” she said.