Across the board, he says, women spend 30% to 50% more of their working time above heat-stress thresholds than men. In construction, when comparing men and women doing the same job, the figure rises to around 50%.
The reasons, he says, are structural. Women often wear more clothing for the same job. Men are more confident asking for breaks. And where men's work is visibly strenuous, it's recognized as a heat risk and rewarded with rest. But women's work is steadier, less obviously punishing, and gets no such relief.
Parsons compares it to the difference between a plane crash and asbestos exposure: One is a sudden, visible catastrophe, the other a slow, constant harm that's easy to miss. “Male heat stress tends to be this taller risk, where you get relatively visible moments of physical distress that can be managed,” he says. “Female heat stress is constantly there, but much less visible, because it doesn't have those same obvious peaks in the working day.”
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