The kathrikka (brinjal) curry was bubbling in a large aluminium pot, sending up the smell of fried onions and spices into the narrow lane outside Kalaivani’s one-room home. She chopped another handful of onions, stirred the curry, and checked the flame, moving between the chores without pausing.
Around her, dirty water trickled through the lane. A few metres away, tiny, dark rooms that stored animal hides filled the air with a heavy stench. Further ahead stood a large cattle shed, where women worked on the hides left behind after slaughter.
This is Puliyanthope in North Chennai, where generations of families, many of them Dalit and Muslim, live alongside slaughterhouses, tanneries, and the waste that comes with them.
But for Kalaivani, the hardest part of living here is not the filth or the stench.
It is the heat.
“In summer, it is not possible to go to work or sit at home. It is boiling hot inside my house. At night, I am not able to sleep properly. I wake up multiple times and pour water all over my body,” she said.
By morning, she is exhausted.
“The next day, I don’t even feel like getting up. Since I work for daily wages, I cannot afford to skip work,” she said.
For Kalaivani, a domestic worker, there is no choice between resting and working, as missing a day’s work means losing that day’s income.
Her husband drinks every day, she said. When he runs short of money, he asks her for some. If she refuses, he becomes angry.
“At times, I lose control and shout back at him. With all this sleeplessness and pain, I am not always able to hold back,” she said.
Then came the sentence that stayed in the room long after she had said it.
“He hits me sometimes,” Kalaivani said, smiling apologetically, as though explaining something that was somehow her fault.
Her mother Selvi interrupted.
“Not sometimes. Whenever he is angry, he hits her,” Selvi said.
The mother and daughter continued talking as life in the lane carried on around them. Cows nosed through plastic waste. Children moved through the narrow passage.
For women like Kalaivani, the heat is not simply endured outdoors. It follows them from the workplace to the household, affecting their bodies, their incomes, and sometimes, their safety.
TNM spoke to 35 women from parts of urban and coastal Chennai to trace the link between climate stress and rising instances of domestic violence.
At least 20 of the 35 women TNM interviewed spoke about experiencing domestic violence, often speaking only after multiple visits and prolonged conversations to build trust. TNM found that extreme heat and disruptions to livelihoods appeared to aggravate the violence experienced by at least 14 of the women.
Of these 20 women, 11 had been rescued by NGOs from abusive situations and were staying in shelter homes.
The women did not describe the violence as being caused by heat. But detailed conversations about their daily lives revealed how extreme heat, water scarcity, declining or disrupted incomes, reduced work opportunities, heat-related health problems, and migration were feeding into tensions within their households. For some women, these pressures led to more frequent or severe episodes of violence.
The findings do not establish a direct causal relationship between extreme heat and domestic violence. Neither was climate stress found to be the sole cause of domestic violence. Instead, the interviews pointed to a more complex relationship: extreme weather and climate-related livelihood pressures can worsen existing inequalities and vulnerabilities, leaving women with fewer resources, less economic security, and greater exposure to violence.
This pattern deserves closer scrutiny as Chennai experiences increasingly frequent and intense heat.
Just three minutes from the narrow lane where Kalaivani lives stands the sprawling Puliyanthope slaughterhouse, one of the major facilities supplying meat to Chennai. Every day, hundreds of goats and cattle are slaughtered here.
The slaughterhouse occupies a vast area under a massive shed. Much of its aluminium roofing is torn and broken, leaving sections of the workspace exposed to the relentless Chennai sun. Wastewater, blood, and sludge collect on the ground. The stench hangs over the surrounding neighbourhood, a dense settlement where families live close by.
Inside the slaughterhouse, workers were reluctant to speak.
“We have nothing to talk about,” two women cleaning a small shed told TNM, refusing to be photographed. Behind them, in another tiny shed, more women continued with their work as men cleaned the larger space where cattle and goats were kept.
For the women who work here, the heat is not an occasional discomfort. It is part of the job.
“We are used to the stink, heat, and all other troubles,” said Subha, who has worked at the slaughterhouse for years.
She turned her hands over and pointed to dark patches on her skin. Then she showed the marks on her back. They were sun burns that, she said, she had suffered while working through the summer under the broken aluminium roof.
The burns have now dried.
“If I don’t come here, there is no food for my children,” she said.
The hardship seemed to follow Subha to her two-room thatched house.
“I underwent hysterectomy a few years back. Since then, I have always had problems at home. I have a lot of health issues. It increases a lot in the summer. I feel like there is a fire inside my head,” she said.
The heat, she said, leaves her with little of the tolerance she once had.
“My son comes home and creates issues. He assaults his wife, destroys things that I bought. He pushes me to the ground. The other day, I fell and my back is still hurting,” she said.
The violence, Subha said, is often linked to her son's drinking.
“This mostly happens when I don’t give him money to drink. Earlier, I was able to control things. Nowadays I can’t, because I have all these health issues,” she said.
For women like Kalaivani and Subha, extreme heat does not end when they leave work. It follows them into homes where there is little space to escape it, into nights when sleep becomes difficult, and into households already strained by poverty, unpaid care work, illness, alcohol dependence, and violence.
In Chennai's poorest neighbourhoods, climate change is experienced as sleepless nights, an exhausted body, lost wages, and more fights at home.
“After I come back home, I feel so tired, but I cannot rest. I have to prepare dinner, wash clothes and vessels, and so on,” said Maniamma from Nochikuppam, who works as a sanitation worker in the Chennai corporation.
Their kitchen, she said, becomes another furnace.
Her husband, who is 10 years older, drives an autorickshaw.
“My husband comes home very angry. He wants something cold to drink, wants his preferred food, and I get very angry because I cannot bear the heat all day and then come home to a kitchen that is too hot. If I react, that ends up in a huge fight,” she said.
“Yes, in summer, the unrest increases,” Maniamma added, acknowledging that the violence at home has a seasonal rhythm.
Maniamma underwent a hysterectomy five years ago. On extremely hot days, she said, she feels as though there is a fire inside her body and her head is “fuming” with heat. She had never been told that the symptoms she experienced could be related to menopause following the surgery.
Recent power cuts made the heat even harder to endure.
“We had frequent power cuts some weeks ago. I had to wave a hand fan for my husband, making my back and hand ache. One day, he kicked me on my back because I did not do that. It still hurts,” she said.
There is another pattern she has noticed.
Her husband often does not go to work on extremely hot days. Those are the days they are more likely to fight, Maniamma said.
It took three days of repeated visits for Kavitha, a flower seller from Kodungaiyur in North Chennai, to speak about the violence she faces at home.
A neighbour had initially told TNM that Kavitha was experiencing domestic problems. Kavitha herself played them down, saying the violence happened only occasionally. Like several other women TNM spoke to, she blamed herself.
Her account, however, revealed another way in which heat can become entangled with violence.
Kavitha does not have a water connection at home. She has to carry water from a common pipe, often making repeated trips in summer.
“It is very difficult to carry water frequently in summer because we need more of it. When there is no water, [my husband] gets angry. In this heat, I also get angry very easily. The heat is unbearable for me,” she said.
“When I shout back at my husband, he hits me. It is because I do not control my temper,” she said.
A doctor had told her that her sensitivity to the heat could be related to her hysterectomy.
Even as she described being assaulted, Kavitha framed the violence as a consequence of her own inability to control her frustration, an indication of how deeply women can internalise responsibility for the violence inflicted on them.
For Vijayalakshmi, climate stress did not begin in Chennai.
It began at the family farm.
Vijayalakshmi, who has burn marks across her body and is still recovering from severe injuries, arrived at a rescue home in Chennai two months ago. She had been living with her husband and young child in Thiruvarur, where the family depended on agriculture.
“We had some land there, but agriculture was not yielding much. There was water scarcity, the heat was intense, and cultivation was not profitable. My husband would not let me take up any other work. I earned some money by rearing cows and chickens at home. When the paddy dried up, fights started at home, and he would beat me badly,” she said.
The family eventually migrated to Chennai with their toddler son, about a year ago, because her husband's brother lived in the city.
But migration did not end the pressures. It compounded them.
“Here, the situation was worse. I could not earn anything because we had no land. He tried taking up construction work, but he regularly faced health problems. Our house was just one room with a tin-sheet roof. Everything made him frustrated, and he started assaulting me every day. My child would watch this happen every day,” she said.
One day, she said, she attempted to take her own life by setting herself on fire because she could no longer bear the assaults.
She broke down as she recalled it.
“After reaching here, I could never sleep at night during summer. The room would become unbearably hot. He would go outside and sleep on the street. I could not do that. Since there was not enough work or money, he would blame me for it and beat me up,” she said.
For Vijayalakshmi, the chain was long: failing agriculture, water scarcity, and heat pushed the family towards migration; migration stripped her of the small livelihood she had; her husband's work became uncertain; and the family ended up in a one-room house under a tin roof, where the summer heat became another source of distress.
At the Kasimedu fish market, Rani sells fish despite a skin condition that worsens when she spends long hours in the heat.
Much of the market consists of closely packed stalls covered by low, corrugated metal roofs that provide little shade, leaving women to sit and work under the hot sun for hours.
She spoke to TNM for nearly an hour before the conversation turned to what happens at home when her husband's earnings fall.
Her husband is a fisher. When he does not earn as much as expected, she said, the tension often spills over into the household.
Rani herself had noticed the connection between heat, fishing, and income.
“Usually, in May and June, traditional fishers are happy because trawling is banned and they expect to get enough fish. But this time, they were not able to stay out in the sun for long. The fish also spoils quickly in the heat, so they do not go as far into the sea. Whatever the reason, this year the earnings were poor, so he would get angry and shout at me,” she said.
She smiled as she recounted it, almost as though trying to soften the weight of what she was saying.
“On top of that, my skin allergy gets worse in the sun, so there were many days when I could not come to work. I had to go to a private hospital for a consultation because the medicines from the government hospital were not effective for me. So he was really angry,” she said.
She continued to smile as she spoke about the incidents.
A doctor from a government-run hospital along the coast in Chennai, said on condition of anonymity, “Women facing domestic violence rarely speak about it, even when medical staff suspect abuse.
“There have been cases where, just by looking at the woman, we could tell that she had been subjected to some kind of violence. But they would not talk about it, even when we ask them repeatedly. They are very scared that we might inform the police, which is the last thing they want,” she said.
“Some plead with us, saying, ‘He did not intend to hit me. It was an accident. He was trying to hit the child and I went in between.’ In cases where we are unable to get them to speak, we are also helpless,” she said, adding that they are legally required to inform the police if a patient confirms domestic violence.
“We do not make it easy for women to leave abusive relationships or report them to the police, said Swetha Shankar, senior programs director at the International Foundation for Crime Prevention & Victim Care (PCVC). She added, “Even after women leave abusive relationships, many survivors are reluctant to approach the police or other formal systems of support. Leaving is a process that takes a long time. Before finally leaving, women may attempt to leave several times. The taboo around separation and divorce, the fear of trying to survive as a single mother, financial dependence, the lack of family support, the lack of institutional support - many factors prevent women from leaving. Many women leave and return several times before they are finally able to break away.”
"Domestic violence is learned behaviour,” Swetha said, adding, “In a patriarchal society we are socialised to uphold systems that control women. There is growing evidence that suggests extreme heat can intensify violence in relationships where abuse already exists. Understanding this link is increasingly important as heat becomes more frequent and severe, particularly for those working with survivors of domestic abuse.”
“At least 20–25% of women have experienced domestic violence in their lifetime, and a significant number told us that it increases during the summer. They also blamed themselves, saying they become more irritable themselves and have less tolerance for even small triggers during summers,” said Soumya Swaminathan, former deputy director of the World Health Organisation and Chairperson of the MS Swaminathan Research Foundation (MSSRF).
“Extreme heat can affect livelihoods too, people may be unable to work or earn less, increasing stress within the household. These could be some of the pathways through which heat is associated with increased domestic violence.”Soumya Swaminathan
The MSSRF analysed data from the National Family Health Survey (NFHS) and 10 years of Indian Meteorology Department (IMD) and found a statistically significant increase in domestic violence in districts that experienced prolonged or recurrent drought, alongside higher anaemia and undernutrition, lower antenatal care, and earlier marriage among women. Soumya Swaminathan said the study combined existing datasets with a primary survey of about 3,500 women across seven states to examine the links between climate stress and women’s health and safety.
A heat-vulnerability index based on exposure, vulnerability, and adaptive capacity also showed a strong association between high heat vulnerability and increased domestic violence, as well as higher hysterectomy rates.
Mohan Kumar, director of Health and Nutrition at MSSRF, said women face greater exposure to heat because of both paid and unpaid work, while declining summer incomes can add stress to households. He said MSSRF’s ongoing study across four settings – urban slums, coastal, agricultural and dryland areas, including two sites each in Tamil Nadu and Karnataka – has found increased intimate partner violence (IPV) during summer in its qualitative analysis. The study is tracking households across two summers and one winter, using weather stations and devices to measure household, surface, and environmental temperatures.
“Women get more exposure to heat, both direct sun and kitchen heat, and the amount of work they do is also more because they carry the burden of housework. There is an increased level of stress within the household during extreme summer."Mohan Kumar, director of Health and Nutrition at MSSRF
He also pointed to a chain linking declining incomes to alcohol use and violence.
“Daily wage workers may not be able to go to work every day during summer, so their income drops. A drop in income can increase alcoholism among men. When alcohol consumption increases, so does violence,” he said.
MSSRF’s field studies identified that women in urban slums and coastal regions face higher vulnerability than women living in agricultural areas.
Divyanshi Vyas, senior associate at Indian Institute of Human Settlements (IIHS), said, “The link between heat, climate stress, and intimate partner violence isn't usually about a single hot day tipping someone over. Chronic climate stress, like prolonged heat or recurring water scarcity, wears down a household's stability over time and results in cumulative tension and exhaustion that can escalate into domestic violence. This sits on top of pre-existing gender hierarchies and rigid divisions of labour. Heat isn't creating vulnerability from nothing; it is intensifying fault lines that are already there.
A 2023 study published in JAMA Psychiatry, a monthly peer-reviewed medical journal published by the American Medical Association, analysed 1,94,871 ever-partnered women aged 15–49 in India, Nepal, and Pakistan and found a clear association between rising temperatures and IPV.
Overall, 27% of women reported IPV, including physical violence (23%), emotional violence (12.5%) and sexual violence (9.5%). Every 1°C rise in annual mean temperature was associated with a 4.49% increase in IPV prevalence (95% CI, 4.20–4.78%).
Another detailed study published in January 2025, by researcher Kien Le of the University of Economics and Law, Vietnam National University, says, “Each additional day where the maximum temperature exceeds 35 degrees Celsius throughout the year compared to the local norm, results in a 0.52%, 1.22%, 0.32%, and 1.26% rise in the composite indices of moderate physical abuse, severe physical abuse, psychological abuse, and sexual abuse, respectively, relative to sample averages.”
The study was done among 2,30,000 women across 46 countries surveyed between 2000 and 2022, with 29 countries located in Africa and the remainder in Asia and Latin America.
A study by MSSRF examined how heat affects women’s physical, mental, and reproductive health and their access to healthcare. Using NFHS-5 (2019–21) data from seven heat-prone states, Rajasthan, Gujarat, Maharashtra, Bihar, Odisha, Telangana and Tamil Nadu, along with a survey of more than 3,300 women in vulnerable districts, the study analysed heat-related health symptoms, reproductive health, and care-seeking patterns.
The study says, “Approximately 18% of women surveyed reported experiencing some form of violence at least once in their household, with over half of them noting a higher occurrence during the summer months. The prevalence and intensification of violence were significantly higher in high Heat Vulnerability Index (HVI) districts, where 38% reported having experienced violence at least once in their lifetime and 72% reported higher levels of violence during April–June; suggesting a strong association between extreme heat, economic stress, and household tensions.”
Mohan Kumar of MSSRF said the ongoing study by the foundation focuses on solutions for the issue and make proper interventions.
Divyanshi said a lot of community-based heat and disaster response leans heavily on women's unpaid, voluntary labour, for instance in early warning systems or local disaster committees, without giving them any real decision-making power or compensation.
“The financing tells a similar story: only around 20% of national climate plans have any dedicated budget for gender integration, and of the international adaptation finance that's tagged as having gender as a principal objective, only about 2% is genuinely gender-responsive,” she said, adding that most plans in the end stay technocratic, focused on short-term relief like water distribution or heat mapping rather than addressing the structural roots of the inequality.
The Chennai Heat Action Plan, 2026, said, “The labour force, especially in cities like Chennai experiences extreme heat stress exceeding 40°C.”
A recent study by Climate Central defines a dangerous humid heat day as one with a maximum wet-bulb temperature of 25°C or higher, when heat and humidity combine to hinder the body’s ability to cool itself. Its analysis of 961 cities across the globe found that dangerous humid heat days attributable to climate change have increased across India over the past 55 years. Of the 59 Indian cities studied, Tirunelveli, Chennai, Tiruchirapalli, and Vijayawada each recorded more than 250 such days a year over eight months in the past decade. Tirunelveli ranked 34th and Chennai 39th globally.
Chennai’s summer has become hotter and more uncomfortable, a 2024 Centre for Science and Environment (CSE) analysis of IMD data shows.
Chennai is also cooling less at night, with the average day-to-night temperature drop falling from 10.2°C to 9.5°C. Meanwhile, the city’s built-up area more than doubled from 132.8 sq km in 2003 to 318.1 sq km in 2023, while green cover fell from 34% to 20.3%. CSE says this rapid concretisation, shrinking green cover, and the urban heat island effect are making heat more persistent and stressful for Chennai.
When asked about measures for tackling heat in Chennai’s crowded slum settlements, Dr G Shanthakumari, chairperson of the Standing Committee (Public Health), said the Corporation had been distributing buttermilk to sanitary workers during summer and had stocked oral rehydration salts (ORS) at primary health centres.
“For slum pockets, we have sufficient stocks of ORS at all primary health centres. We had earlier kept ORS at bus stands too, but reduced that practice after the rains began,” she said.
Climate-linked gender-based violence should be recognised as an emerging public policy concern, while being approached with scientific care, said Supriya Sahu, former Secretary for Environment, Climate Change and Forests Department who recently took charge as Additional Chief Secretary and Commissioner of the Entrepreneurship Development and Innovation Institute.
She noted that extreme heat does not cause or excuse violence, and responsibility must always rest with the perpetrator, adding, “However, heat related illness, income loss, overcrowding, displacement, and psychological stress may intensify existing household tensions and make it more difficult for women experiencing violence to seek assistance.”
Tamil Nadu’s heat action plan mentions, “Women often face greater vulnerability to disasters, particularly in developing nations. Social and economic factors can magnify the impact of extreme heat on females, including gender-based inequalities in healthcare, education, and economic opportunities.”
According to Soumya Swaminathan, the lack of gender-disaggregated data often makes women’s vulnerabilities invisible, while limited community participation and unclear accountability leave many plans reactive rather than preventive.
“All government policies, including heat action plans, need to be looked at through a gender lens,” she said. “Many are gender-blind because women are often invisible in the databases.”
According to Divyanshi, gender-responsive heat strategies should include vulnerability assessments at the sub-ward level that examine social norms, land tenure, and unpaid care burdens, rather than treating gender as a mere demographic checkbox.
Divyanshi also recommended the establishing of coordination units across municipal departments so that climate action and social policy are not siloed; redesign public services to reduce and redistribute unpaid care work, including through reliable access to water and clean fuel and formal, paid care infrastructure; build in financial protection through measures such as gender-responsive budgeting or pilot income insurance for informal women workers who lose wages during extreme heat; and directly involve grassroots women’s collectives, such as SEWA and the Mahila Housing Trust, in designing these interventions. Supriya Sahu said the gender gap in climate policies often appears at the last mile
“Policy commitments have not yet been fully translated into ward level and occupation specific measures with clearly assigned responsibilities, measurable targets, and public reporting. For example, women working in markets, construction sites, streets, factories, informal enterprises, and home-based units need reliable access to drinking water, shaded rest areas, toilets, healthcare, and heat alerts suited to their working conditions.”Supriya Sahu
She said heat action plans should begin to recognise domestic safety as part of social vulnerability. According to her, proper data is required to move forward with appropriate policies. It should be further disaggregated by disability, income, caste, housing conditions, and migration status.
“The category of women alone cannot reveal which section of women face the greatest exposure. Without such information, heat action plans and workplace adaptation programmes rely on broad categories such as outdoor workers or vulnerable populations,” Sahu said.
This story was produced with support from the Earth Journalism Network (EJN) Fellowship on Non-Economic Loss and Damage Due to Climate Impacts Along the Bay of Bengal Coast.
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