ON SWELTERING streets of Dhaka, time does not tick. It melts. For the thousands of women who work in open market places, tin-roofed factories or city landfills, heat is not merely an inconvenience. It is a slow-burning threat that tightens its grip each summer. With soaring mercury and infrastructure that could not care less, Dhaka鈥檚 working women race against a clock that does not measure hours, but survival.
Two-time mother Momena Begum, of a Karail slum, begins her day by fanning her ailing child before daylight. Her room, less than 100 square feet, is still hot from the previous evening. 鈥楾he roof burns us alive,鈥� she says. She cannot sleep and cannot work effectively. Yet, she has to keep going. Her body is a war zone on which duty fights fatigue, hourly and daily.
In the last decade, the land surface temperature of Dhaka has increased by more than 6掳C. Urban heat islands, a product of rampant development and lost green cover, turn some neighbourhoods into furnaces. Karail, Rayerbazar and Hazaribagh, home to a number of poor women who work there too, consistently record indoor temperatures in excess of 42掳C. The poorest women of the city now endure heat warmer than most industrial ovens set on low.
Shanta, a street food seller at Rayerbazar, tends to a kerosene stove in a shack constructed from shattered wood and plastic sheets. 鈥業 collapsed last year as I served tea,鈥� she says. 鈥楤ut if I don鈥檛 work, my children go hungry.鈥� No holiday pay, no sick leave and no break in the shade. For women like her, it is survival minute by minute and the climate clock could not care less.
Nearly 80 per cent of working women in Dhaka work informally, in the streets as vendors, in households as domestic workers, scavenging through garbage, and in apparel factories. These are tough jobs and ones that seldom provide respite from the elements. The heat they suffer is not a setting. It is a daily adversary that assaults their health, productivity and dignity. And, these women are not to be found in most climate action plans.
Heat stress is more than just an inconvenience. It leads to dizziness, vomiting, dehydration and even menstrual irregularity. More than 75 per cent of female apparel workers experience these symptoms during the height of summer. Less than a half of the factories have any ventilation. Paid sick leave for heat-related illness is all but non-existent. And if a woman faints at work, the remedy is not attention. It is replacement. Her absence spells hunger at home and discipline at work.
On Dhaka鈥檚 black market, garbage pickers, mostly girls and women, trek as much as 15 kilometres a day under the scorching sun to pick up metal and plastic. Rubina, 28, recounts that her skin peels off weekly and her sandals melt onto the ground. 鈥業 develop sores. But, if I don鈥檛 work, my family starves.鈥� She makes Tk 300鈥�400 on a good day. But, she has never noticed a drinking water stall in her area.
These women have come up with their own tenuous survival strategies. Some wet their saris and dry them on doors. Some sleep on tar roads overnight because it is cooler than at home. Some carry water in plastic bags on their heads. These are no solutions. These are tenuous survival tactics in the absence of institutional support.
Less than 10 per cent of informally employed women can afford fans, shaded areas or shared cooling systems. 鈥楶ublic shelters?鈥� Rubina inquires. 鈥榃e鈥檝e never heard of them.鈥� The climate resilience discussion is full of talk about green roofs and cool pavement in upscale neighbourhoods. But, no trees are planted in the neighbourhoods most affected by heat because the people themselves are rendered invisible.
Dhaka鈥檚 climate action plans and the National Adaptation Plan (2023鈥�2050) mention urban heat. The plans, however, prioritise glass towers, not tin roofs. The funds for them flow towards smart buildings and technology-driven cooling rather than for impoverished human lives. Heatwaves, however, continue to surge, converting kitchens into kilns and streets into crematoriums of the city鈥檚 working poor.
Gender norms also increase the risks. Women who are poor are usually engaged in work that is confined indoors with no ventilation or outside in labour. They are responsible for cooking on fire, water fetching and waste disposal, activities done under conditions of suffocation. Moreover, cultural constraints restrict their entry into cooler outdoor spaces or access to instant medical attention. They bear a climate burden compounded by unpaid labour and restricted mobility.
What if they fall ill? Momena responds pragmatically: 鈥業f I go to clinic, who will cook?鈥� This is the vicious spiral of 鈥榙ouble exposure.鈥� Women are subjected to greater environmental hazards with less ability to cope with them. Their misery is unspoken, uncounted and ongoing. It is not only economic exclusion. It is, rather, environmental exclusion.
It is the expert view that a gender-blind climate policy is a failed policy. Bangladesh cannot achieve heat resilience without accounting for the women holding its cities upright. Urban planning needs to incorporate mobile health clinics in slums, shaded market stalls, subsidised cooling equipment for caretakers and gender-sensitive heat warnings. Above all, it needs to incorporate the voices of the most vulnerable.
This is not charity. It is justice. The women who are keeping Dhaka running 鈥� cooking, selling, sorting and sweeping 鈥� need to be recognised, relieved, and granted their rights. Heat is not a temporary inconvenience. It is a public health crisis and a gendered one. The longer the government delays, the more women will silently die under its weight.
It is crucial to mention that these women do not inherently embody victimhood. Rather, they embody survival as necessity. Their resilience is to be admired. That resilience must not, however, be wrongly assumed to be boundless. The temperatures in Dhaka are increasing, bringing the city dangerously close to a point of uninhabitability. Time is of the essence as each hour that passes without action detracts from the possibility of their future.
As the city expands upward and outward, let us not overlook who is holding it up from underneath. Climate justice must begin with those most at risk, not end there. These women do not ask for luxury, but shade, water and dignity. That is not much. That is the least a just city can offer.
In this edge city, the moment to move from rhetoric to action has arrived. Climate resilience is meaningless if it does not shield those who can least afford to suffer more. Dhaka cannot be climate-smart if it leaves its women burning behind.
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Shajeda Akter Moni, an army major, is deputy director at the Research Centre, Bangladesh University of Professionals.