The heatwave afflicting western Europe is the worst ever, with the combination of heat and humidity fuelled by the climate crisis making scores of cities feel unliveable. While for some the adverse impacts amount to disturbed sleep and sticky days in the home office, low-income families are often worse affected by cities’ lack of adequate adaptation measures, with women at the sharp end.

“[It] throws a grenade into every vulnerability you already have,” says Asad Rehman, chief executive of Friends of the Earth, pointing out that vulnerable or marginalised groups often bear the brunt of climate crisis-based hardship globally.

In built-up cities, the socioeconomic aspect of this disparity can be most acute: studies have found that trees can halve the urban heat island effect but green spaces are not distributed equally, meaning poorer communities in densely packed flats and houses tend to suffer most. Rehman cites a study that found tree shade reduced maximum surface temperatures by 19C, while grass reduced them by 24C.

For Emily Dickinson, 36, her partner, Danny Swain, 34, and their son, Oliver, 10, a small living space aggravates the impact. Their one-bedroom apartment in Tufnell Park, London, made it impossible for Oliver to study after his school closed on Tuesday, along with more than 1,000 around the country. The family also have no nearby access to green spaces, having to walk in scorching heat to access cooler areas.

“It’s been unbearable,” Dickinson says. “At school, he was probably more comfortable than in our living situation.” This is exacerbated for families who face not just having to entertain a child in a hot home, but losing out on work at the same time.

“We feel like we’re the peasants that just have to deal with it,” she says. In unexpected circumstances such as this heatwave, expenses like air conditioning and fans add an impossible burden to already stretched finances. While she hopes the government will look at the inaccessibility of expensive air conditioning for low-income families, she is pessimistic about whether any effective change will be made to improve social infrastructure’s ability to cope with extreme heat.

Arcan Büyük Kahramanı, 43, and his wife Ayten, 41, had no choice but to keep their son, Poyraz, seven, with them at their cafe business in Islington after his school closed. “We can’t just close the shop,” says Arcan, expressing concern that Poyraz struggled to complete his homework in their cafe and would be missing out on education. The absence of a family support network means Arcan has few childcare alternatives.

“We can’t leave him with anyone else … [or] afford to hire a babysitter,” adds Arcan.

Even when families do have support networks, childcare is not always guaranteed when extreme heat results in travel cancellations and delays. Kimberley Lloyd, 76, from Southend, looks after her grandson Wyatt, nine, for two nights a week at her single-parent daughter’s house. “If I can’t get up here, she can’t work,” Kimberley says.

Charlotte Buxton, 41, from South Derbyshire, has also struggled with childcare. In her household of five children, three are autistic and the heatwave has made it harder to support their needs. Buxton chose to keep her son with the most severe learning difficulties at home with his younger brother, whose school was closed on Wednesday, feeling she would be better able to safeguard him in the heat. However, she says this decision to prioritise her children’s health comes at the expense of her own.

“I have to choose all the time,” she says. Since the heatwave’s onset, Buxton has balanced the full-time care of her children with household duties and managing her own disabilities, fibromyalgia and postural tachycardia syndrome. The likely hotter and more frequent heatwaves to come as a result of the climate crisis point to an unsustainable future for Buxton and many similar families who are “struggling anyway”, she says.

Buxton says it is often women who are left to pick up the pieces. “It’s always the mums,” she says. A 2022 study found that almost half of all working-age women do an average of 45 hours unpaid care per week. Gemma Derrick, research policy and culture professor at the University of Bristol, found women’s productivity was more significantly affected than men’s when either became a parent. In emergency or unexpected situations, mothers were often relied upon as a first port of call.

“It unconsciously sidelines women,” Derrick says – referring to school closures and cancellations during a heatwave – because mothers are assumed to be the primary caregiver.

Rehman agrees, suggesting that oppression of marginalised groups, especially women, could become more pronounced in the near future due to extreme heat – the only solutions being preventive measures to decelerate global heating combined with adaptation measures.

“Have we created conditions that put marginalised people at risk?” he says. “It’s not them that are causing [it], but they are the ones suffering.”