Intersections
Same heat,
different lives
A heatwave falls on a whole street at once. Who it harms, and who protection reaches, depends on where the parts of each life meet: age, gender, body, work, home, language, papers and place.
A note on intersectionality
Intersectionality is a way of seeing how the parts of a person’s life combine. It began in legal scholarship in the late 1980s, to describe discrimination that no single category could explain, and it is now used widely in public health.
In a heatwave, the parts of a life do not simply add up. They meet. An older woman is at risk; an older woman who lives alone, cannot walk far and has no phone may be reached by nothing at all. A warning, a cooling centre and a cash payment can each work well for most people, and still miss the same person, for different reasons, at the same time.
This is why protection designed for an average person tends to miss people at the crossings. The barriers set out on Who heat hits hardest rarely come alone.
Seeing the crossings is not about ranking people by how much they suffer. Everyone on this page also has strengths, and the people closest to a barrier usually know best how to get round it.
A game
Who does protection reach?
Eight people live on one street. A heatwave is coming. You can put three protections in place. Then look closely at who they reach, and redesign.
- Choose three
- Look closer
- Redesign
- An older widow who lives aloneKnows everyone on her lane, and they know her.
- A pregnant garment worker on night shifts, new to the cityHas a close friend on the same shift.
- A street vendor who is deafReads fast, and is in the vendors’ phone group.
- A girl of fourteen who looks after her younger brothersHer school has started a heat club.
- A construction worker from another stateA workmate from his village translates for him.
- A transgender woman who sells snacks near the stationBelongs to a community group that looks out for its members.
- A man with a heart condition, in a tin-roofed room with his familyHis daughter works as a nurse’s aide.
- A farmworker with a baby, in a village far from the clinicHer women’s savings group meets every week.
Choose three protections
0 of 3 chosen
A thinking exercise. The people are composites, not real individuals, and the rules simplify the barriers described in the evidence on this site. It is not a model of any real street.
Resources
- Minecraft: Extreme Heat Series (opens in a new tab) From the Climate Resilience Center (Arsht-Rock’s One Billion Resilient), with Minecraft Education and Rewrite Edu: two games, Heat Wave Survival and Power Grid Hero, and a Build Challenge. Students learn to recognise heat exhaustion and heatstroke and respond with simple steps such as fans and water, and see how parks, reflective surfaces and shade can cool a city.
- A night in the heatStay with an older woman living alone, a pregnant woman or a family with a baby through a hot night and a clinic visit.
- Who heat hits hardestTen groups, the barriers between them and safety, and what helps.
We will be adding many more resources. If you know one that belongs here, we would be glad to hear about it.