BANGKOK, September 16, 2026 : Extreme heat is increasingly becoming a gender equality issue in Thailand, placing women informal workers under simultaneous pressure from falling incomes, deteriorating health, unpaid care responsibilities and heightened safety risks, according to new research from HERA.

The organisation’s “Weathering Change: How Extreme Heat is Reshaping Women’s Lives in Thailand” report draws on workshops, listening sessions and focus groups involving 299 women informal workers across eight provinces. The findings reveal how heat is changing not only women’s working conditions but also their financial independence, physical health, mental well-being and responsibilities at home.

Thailand has more than 11 million women working in the informal economy, including street vendors, motorcycle taxi drivers, domestic workers and home-based workers. Many work outdoors or in poorly ventilated environments and are also primary earners for their households.

The report argues that extreme heat must therefore be understood not only as a climate issue but as one that can reinforce existing gender inequalities.

Women Are Earning Less as Heat Intensifies

The financial impact documented by HERA is stark.

Women working in shellfish processing reported daily earnings falling by as much as 75%, from 400 baht to 100 baht, because higher temperatures accelerated food spoilage. Home-based weavers reported losing around 50% of their productivity, particularly during the hottest hours between 11am and 3pm. Women motorcycle taxi drivers also reported income being cut in half as passenger demand declined during peak heat.

This loss of income has particular implications for gender equality because many of these women are supporting families.

Their earnings pay for household expenses, schooling and healthcare, meaning heat-related income disruption does not stop with the worker. It affects entire households.

At the same time, women are being required to spend more to cope with the heat.

Electricity bills were reported to have tripled, while water costs rose by 75% to 80%. Healthcare expenses could cost between three and ten times a woman’s daily wage.

The result is a widening gap between what women earn and what they need to spend simply to remain healthy and productive.

Health Risks Are Gendered

The report documents a wide range of heat-related health problems, including headaches, dizziness, fainting, heatstroke, nosebleeds and severe heat rashes. Some women also reported miscarriages and pregnancy-related complications.

One motorcycle taxi driver described being unable to continue driving when temperatures rose because of headaches and dizziness. HERA also documented her miscarriage during the extreme April 2025 heat.

These experiences highlight an often overlooked dimension of workplace equality. Occupational heat exposure can interact with pregnancy, reproductive health and women’s existing care responsibilities in ways that conventional workplace policies do not always address.

For informal workers, these risks can be even more acute because there may be no employer providing sick leave, workplace cooling, medical benefits or alternative duties during periods of dangerous heat.

The Double Burden of Paid and Unpaid Work

One of the clearest gender dimensions in the report is the intersection between paid labour and unpaid care work. Women who move work into cooler night-time hours to avoid daytime heat often still spend the day caring for children or elderly family members affected by the same heat.

This creates what HERA describes as an “exhaustion trap”, where women work at night but continue unpaid care work during the day, leaving little time for rest or physical recovery.

Mental health pressures compound the problem.

Women participating in the study reported insomnia, anxiety, irritability and depression, especially where intense caregiving responsibilities were combined with paid employment.

The findings show that extreme heat can amplify a long-standing gender inequality: women frequently carry responsibility for both earning income and providing unpaid household care.

When climate shocks increase both workloads simultaneously, the burden falls disproportionately on them.

Avoiding Heat Can Increase Safety Risks

The report also shows how adaptation strategies can create gender-specific safety concerns. Some women motorcycle taxi drivers shifted their working hours into the night to escape dangerous daytime temperatures. But doing so increased their reported exposure to harassment and sexual assault.

This is a critical finding for gender-responsive climate policy. A solution that reduces heat exposure but increases the threat of gender-based violence cannot be considered an equitable adaptation strategy.

It means governments, communities and employers must consider physical safety alongside temperature when designing work-hour changes, transport policies, cooling centres and climate resilience programmes.

The informal economy is particularly important to the gender dimension of the report. Women working informally often lack many of the protections that employees in formal workplaces may take for granted.

There may be no occupational heat standard, paid leave, employer health insurance, fixed cooling space or income protection during heatwaves.

For home-based workers, the boundary between workplace and home may disappear altogether. The same poorly ventilated environment can be both production site and household living space.

This makes heat resilience inseparable from questions of decent work, social protection and economic inclusion.

Heat Is Also a Dignity Issue

HERA repeatedly frames the impact of heat through three interconnected dimensions: health, income and dignity. The inclusion of dignity is significant.

For women who have to stop working because of illness, struggle to meet family expenses, face harassment when changing work hours or cannot afford healthcare, the impact is not simply financial.

It can reduce personal agency and increase dependency. Gender equality is partly about ensuring that women can participate in economic life on safe and equitable terms. Extreme heat threatens that participation when it forces women to choose between income and health, or between daytime heat and night-time safety risks.

The HERA workshops also produced encouraging evidence that education and participation can make a difference.

After taking part, 70% of participants reported greater understanding of extreme heat and its impacts, while 99% recognised heat as a serious threat to their lives and livelihoods.

That increased awareness matters because information can strengthen women’s ability to recognise risks, demand protection and participate in designing responses.

HERA’s approach is deliberately participatory. Rather than imposing solutions, it uses women’s own experiences to identify what effective protection might look like.

Women involved have identified priorities such as practical cooling, safer workplaces, accessible healthcare, early-warning systems and financial protection.

Financial Protection Could Be Part of the Answer

HERA’s broader response includes the Women’s Climate Shock Insurance and Livelihoods Initiative, launched with Prudence Foundation in India in 2024.

The programme combines microinsurance and cash assistance with early-warning and heat-health messaging, and is now being adapted to support more localised, gender-responsive interventions in Thailand.

For women informal workers, such financial protection could be particularly important because lost working days can immediately translate into lost household income.

Traditional insurance products are often not designed around intermittent climate-related income loss. Parametric or shock-responsive models could potentially help bridge that gap, provided they remain affordable and accessible.

Climate Policy Must Become Gender Policy

The wider lesson from the HERA report is that climate adaptation cannot be gender-neutral.

Extreme heat interacts with labour conditions, income inequality, reproductive health, caregiving, safety and access to healthcare.

Policies that address only temperature exposure risk missing much of the problem.

For women workers, a meaningful heat response may need to include safe working hours, shaded or cooled spaces, healthcare access, financial protection, childcare and eldercare support, transport safety and stronger social protection.

The report therefore reinforces a broader principle: climate resilience and gender equality are becoming increasingly inseparable.

Perhaps the strongest element of HERA’s approach is the decision to begin with women’s lived experiences.

The 299 women participating in the research were not treated merely as beneficiaries of climate programmes. Their experiences were used as evidence for shaping the next stage of solutions.

That approach has implications far beyond Thailand.  Women working in informal economies across Asia face similar combinations of outdoor work, insecure income, limited social protection and unpaid care responsibilities.

As heat becomes more intense, those existing inequalities can magnify. For policymakers and businesses, the message is clear: protecting women from extreme heat cannot be treated as a niche climate initiative.

It is a workplace equality issue, an economic participation issue, a healthcare issue and, increasingly, a question of whether women can continue earning safely in a warming world.