Support when it matters most: HERA’s heat-triggered protection for women
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In May 2024, during one of India’s most extreme heatwaves on record, Gitaben collapsed while working in a market in Ahmedabad. Temperatures that day climbed close to 50°C. For Gitaben, a headloader who earns her living carrying goods between wholesalers and retailers, the heat was not an inconvenience. It was dangerous.
The video below shares this story of Gitaben’s through Kathy Baughman McLeod, CEO of HERA. It shows how extreme heat can turn a day’s work into a life‑altering event, and why protection needs to be fast, practical and designed around people’s real lives.
For more stories from Gitaben herself, scroll to the bottom of the page.
Life on the frontline of extreme heat
Gitaben works outdoors every day, waiting for clients to call when goods are ready to be moved. Because of her social status and the informal nature of market work, she cannot wait inside where there is shade or airflow. When her client called that day, she lifted the load onto her head and set off, before collapsing from the heat.
She broke her leg, suffered a head injury, and damaged the goods she was carrying. Unable to work, she still owed her client money under the rules of the market. Women like Gitaben often have no safety net, and with no income, they face being forced to take out a high‑interest loan just to cover food, medical costs and debt.
Stories like Gitaben’s are becoming increasingly common as heatwaves grow longer, hotter and more frequent. And they reveal a horrible truth: for many informal workers, extreme heat is both a threat to livelihoods and to life.
How WCSI works
What changed the trajectory of Gitaben’s story was her enrolment in the Women’s Climate Shock Insurance and Livelihood Initiative (WCSI), developed by HERA.
WCSI is designed specifically for women informal workers exposed to climate shocks such as extreme heat. Rather than relying on traditional claims processes, it uses objective temperature thresholds. When those thresholds are crossed, payouts are triggered automatically.
In Gitaben’s case, the heat triggered both an insurance payout and additional cash support. Together, this covered several days of lost income. It meant she could buy food, pay her doctor, and repay part of the debt she owed, avoiding a deeper downward spiral at a moment of real vulnerability.
WCSI is about income protection, but it is also about dignity, choice and agency. It helps women stay afloat when the climate makes work unsafe, rather than pushing them into cycles of debt that can take years to escape.
Our partnership with HERA
Howden Foundation partners with HERA because of their deep expertise in gender‑responsive insurance and financial protection for low‑income women. HERA works closely with communities to understand how climate risks are actually felt day to day, and designs solutions that respond to those lived realities rather than abstract models.
Our support for the WCSI reflects this shared approach. Extreme heat is already affecting people’s health, safety and ability to earn a living, particularly for women working informally and outdoors. Programmes like WCSI combine climate risk expertise with practical protection that reaches people quickly, when it matters most.
Many Gitabens
Gitaben’s experience is not unique. There are many women like her working in intense heat, without protection, in markets across India and around the world. As temperatures continue to rise, the question is not whether more people will be affected, but whether systems exist to support them when the heat becomes too much to bear.
This is why we support work like WCSI. Not because it offers a complete answer, but because it offers something essential: fast support at the moment it is needed most, designed around the realities of people’s lives.