As another UK heatwave pushes temperatures to 40°C, Kate Metcalf argues that climate adaptation cannot be designed without including those people most affected. The women living with overheating homes, caring responsibilities and climate-related inequalities must have a central role in shaping the solutions.
By Kate Metcalf, Co-Director at Wen (Women’s Environmental Network)
As the UK braces for temperatures of up to 40°C this week, climate change can no longer be talked about as a future threat. It is here now, shaping people’s daily lives, affecting their health, their homes, their work and their wellbeing.
But while headlines focus on record-breaking temperatures, there is a risk that we overlook a crucial question: who is most affected, and who gets to shape the response?
At Wen, we know that climate change is not experienced equally. The impacts of extreme heat intersect with existing inequalities, meaning that women, particularly women facing poverty, racism, disability, insecure housing and other forms of disadvantage, are often among those hit first and hardest.
This week, as our Climate Sisters head to Parliament to speak directly to decision makers as part of the launch of our joint housing briefing with the Women’s Budget Group, they will be sharing something that is too often missing from climate discussions: lived experience.
Because climate change is not an abstract policy issue. It is the mother trying to keep her children cool in an overcrowded flat that traps heat long after the sun has gone down. It is the pregnant woman struggling through rising temperatures while worrying about the impact on her health and her baby’s wellbeing. It is the woman experiencing menopause whose symptoms are intensified by extreme heat. It is the carer, often balancing paid work and unpaid care, navigating increasingly difficult conditions with limited support.
These experiences rarely make it into ministerial briefings. Yet they tell us something essential about what climate adaptation and climate justice should look like.
The evidence is clear. During the UK’s 2022 heatwaves there were almost twice as many excess deaths among women as among men (1). Pregnant women face increased risks from extreme heat, including dehydration, heat exhaustion and adverse pregnancy outcomes. Women are more likely to be living on low incomes, more likely to be carrying out caring responsibilities, and more likely to be affected by poor-quality housing that becomes dangerously hot during periods of extreme weather (2). This is particularly the case for racialised and marginalised women.
But statistics alone can never tell the whole story.
For years, Wen’s Climate Sisters programme has created spaces for women to come together, share their experiences and develop collective solutions to the challenges they face. Through these conversations we have heard directly from women living in homes that become unbearable during summer heatwaves, women worried about the cost of keeping their families safe, and women who feel excluded from decisions that directly affect their communities.
What emerges time and again is that the people living with these realities often have the clearest understanding of what needs to change.
They talk about the need for better housing, more green spaces, and stronger community networks that recognise the realities of women’s lives. They highlight connections between climate change, housing, health, racism and other inequalities that are too often treated as separate policy issues.
This is why centring lived experience matters.
Too often, climate policy is developed at a distance from the communities most affected. Consultation happens after decisions have been made. Participation becomes a tick-box exercise. Lived experience is treated as anecdotal rather than expert.
A feminist climate justice approach demands something different. It recognises that expertise comes in many forms and that those living through the impacts of climate change have knowledge that is essential to developing effective solutions. It means moving beyond representation alone and ensuring that women, especially racialised and marginalised women, have genuine influence over decisions, resources and priorities.
As temperatures rise, adaptation can no longer be treated as a technical challenge. It is also a question of fairness, equality and democracy.
The women speaking in Parliament this week are not there to provide a personal story alongside the evidence. Their experiences are evidence. Their insights are expertise. Their voices are critical to building responses that work in the real world.
Climate change is already reshaping our communities. The question now is whether we are prepared to listen to the people living through its impacts and give them a meaningful role in shaping what comes next.
If we want climate solutions that are effective, equitable and lasting, women’s voices cannot be an afterthought. They must be at the centre.
Read the Climate Sisters thoughts from this week’s event.
Read our briefing on Why women and climate?
References:
(1) ONS stats (2022) https://www.ons.gov.uk/peoplepopulationandcommunity/birthsdeathsandmarriages/deaths/articles/excessmortalityduringheatperiods/englandandwales1juneto31august2022
(2) Wen Why Women and Climate? Briefing (2026) https://www.wen.org.uk/wp-content/uploads/Why-Women-Climate-Change_-Briefing-FINAL.pdf
Kate Metcalf, Co-director, Wen
Kate has over 20 years’ experience developing community and international networks within international development and environmental organisations with a focus on gender and social justice. Kate leads Wen’s Feminist Green New Deal project aiming to ensure that women, racialised and marginalised groups are central to the green economy.
