Heat Behind the Hearth: Dalit Women’s Thermal Labour, Nutritional Trade-offs, and Energy Injustice in Madhesh Province, Nepal

When evaluating the transition to clean cooking, the global focus has predominantly remained on smoke exposure and fuel scarcity. However, a groundbreaking new qualitative study published in Energy Research & Social Science by SEFNep researchers Animesh Ghimire, Mohan Das Manandhar, and Sarita Karki, alongside Karuna Bajracharya, exposes a critical, overlooked crisis: thermal labour.

Focusing on Dalit women in Madhesh Province, the research investigates the severe physical and social toll of performing domestic work under prolonged, intense cooking-zone heat.

Key Insights from the Study:

• Bodily Depletion & Nutritional Trade-offs: The extreme heat from open fires and rudimentary stoves extends beyond mere discomfort. It causes a physiological depletion that directly suppresses women’s appetites, negatively impacts their perceived capacity to breastfeed, and forces the simplification of family meals.

• The Multiplier Effect of Male Out-Migration: As male family members migrate for work, Dalit women face an expanded burden of thermal labour. The responsibilities of fuel gathering, cooking, childcare, and elder care are consolidated into longer, relentless routines around the hearth.

• Energy Injustice & Caste Marginalisation: Access to clean cooking solutions is not merely a matter of affordability. The transition is heavily constrained by caste-mediated documentation requirements, rigid credit systems, and a profound lack of institutional recognition for Dalit women as legitimate energy users.

A Call for Recognition Justice: SEFNep argues that household energy poverty is lived through heat, hunger, and unequal transition pathways. Clean-cooking policies, stove evaluations, and maternal-health outreach must immediately incorporate thermal performance metrics and actively address systemic caste barriers that prevent equitable energy access.

[ Read the full open-access article in Energy Research & Social Science ]