Making the ‘Invisible’ Visible: Indoor Heat, Unpaid Domestic Work, and Women’s Resilience

Extreme heat places a disproportionate and, in many ways, an invisible burden on women engaged in unpaid domestic work like cooking and managing households. Unpaid domestic work is uncounted in economic data, while the stifling indoor heat of kitchens and living spaces remains absent from policy, hidden within private walls, and largely unacknowledged in public discourse. Indoor temperatures can often exceed outdoor ones, and in poorly ventilated, tin-roofed homes, routine domestic work becomes a health hazard. Co-created with women homemakers, this project aims to document their personal struggles with rising heat, and how women adapt with resourcefulness, finding small yet often inadequate ways to stay cool and ease discomfort. Through their voices, we glimpse their struggles, creativity, and the everyday strength that keeps homes and care going in a warming world.