At five every morning, Aziza and Souad wake before sunrise. They leave their village with dozens of other women in pickup trucks or three-wheeled vehicles, heading for fields where they harvest crops, weed and sort vegetables in direct sunlight. Their working day exceeds ten hours, while temperatures at the height of midday can pass 45°C.
Aziza al-Toubal, 35, from Sohag in southern Egypt, says she grew accustomed to working in the sun, having inherited agricultural work from her family. But she describes the heat of the past three years as “a blazing fire” that no person can withstand. She, her sister and their colleagues repeatedly fall ill after spending all day in direct sunlight. They cannot leave: this work is their only livelihood.
Souad Hussein, 25, feels deeply wronged. She earns no more than EGP 200 for more than ten hours under the burning sun, without a break. “We eat while working. They do not let us rest or even go to the toilet. All the employer cares about is getting everything done in one day so he does not have to pay for another. We are not treated as human beings.”
Agriculture is one of Egypt’s largest employers, accounting for roughly a fifth of workers and around 11–12% of gross domestic product. Labour-market figures cited in the Arabic report put agricultural employment at approximately 6.57 million people, or 20.5% of all employed people, making it the second-largest employer after services. Its economic contribution has declined relative to earlier decades: it employs one worker in five but produces about a tenth of the economy, a disparity that reflects low productivity and the prevalence of poorly paid work. Reported labour-market figures.
Women are a cornerstone of the sector, although official statistics do not fully reflect their contribution. The national climate-adaptation document cited in the report estimates that about 45% of employed women work in agriculture, predominantly in the informal economy. National adaptation document.
The same document puts informal employment at 94% of agricultural labour and women’s share of formal agricultural employment at no more than 20%. These are different measures: together, they point to widespread work without contracts, social protection or health insurance.
Women also undertake an estimated 94% of manual harvesting in Upper Egypt and 67% in Lower Egypt, particularly in labour-intensive crops such as wheat, sugar cane and fodder, according to the sources cited in the original report.
The lack of protection extends beyond agriculture. Data from the International Labour Organization and Egypt’s Central Agency for Public Mobilization and Statistics reviewed by the OECD put informal employment among working women at 57%; another ILO estimate cited in the report is approximately 62%. The estimates should not be read as a single, identical measurement. OECD report.
Millions of women consequently work outside employment-linked social insurance, occupational-injury coverage and healthcare. Any interruption caused by illness, pregnancy or extreme heat can immediately cut off their income.
ILO fieldwork in agricultural supply chains, including jasmine production in Gharbia, also shows extensive reliance on women and children in unstable, low-paid jobs with weak social protection. This pattern is not confined to jasmine: it reflects broader features of agricultural employment. ILO study of jasmine pickers.
A longer summer, greater risks in the fields
Over the past two decades, Egypt has experienced gradually rising temperatures, more extremely hot days and longer heatwaves, particularly in July and August, which coincide with the peak of several agricultural seasons.
The climate-adaptation projections cited in the report place Egypt among the Middle East and North Africa’s most heat-exposed countries. Under continued emissions, they anticipate a rise of around 1.5–2°C in average temperatures by mid-century, bringing more days above 40°C, especially in Upper Egypt and the Delta.
During summer 2023, several governorates reportedly approached 46°C, with some southern areas exceeding 47°C. Heatwaves continued through 2024 and 2025, accompanied by repeated meteorological warnings about hot air masses and high humidity, which raise the temperature people actually feel above the recorded air temperature.
Aswan, Luxor, Qena, Sohag and New Valley were among the hottest governorates in the summers of 2024 and 2025. Minya, Beni Suef and Fayoum recorded 42–45°C during several heatwaves. On some days in summer 2026, temperatures approached 44°C across large parts of Upper Egypt, while humidity intensified perceived heat, particularly in the Delta and Greater Cairo.
The meteorological warnings cited in the report describe an increasing number of exceptionally hot days, reflecting climate change and intensifying the risks faced by people working outdoors, including women agricultural workers.
Those figures do not mean the same thing for everyone. In cities, many people can shelter at home or in air-conditioned workplaces. Women agricultural workers spend their working hours in open fields, where rising temperatures become a direct occupational hazard rather than a seasonal inconvenience.
The ILO warns that sustained work in high temperatures reduces physical capacity and concentration, increases exhaustion and raises the risk of occupational accidents. Its projection for 2030 is a global loss of working hours equivalent to 80 million full-time jobs, with agriculture particularly exposed because so much of its work takes place outdoors. ILO report on heat at work.
Souad says her 60-year-old mother was stung by a scorpion while harvesting tomatoes last year on a farm near al-Balyana. There were no first-aid supplies or medical services. The women resorted to what she calls “primitive methods”: they tied her leg above the sting and made a small cut in her foot, believing they could release blood containing venom. They then transported her by three-wheeler to the nearest health unit, about an hour from the farm near the mountain. This describes their emergency response; it is not medical advice.
The farm borders desert terrain, where scorpions and snakes regularly appear, Souad adds. She says doctors later told the family that the scorpion was highly venomous and that her mother’s survival was a miracle. “Divine care—because they told us the venom was the deadly kind.”
Souad says the incident was not exceptional. Women repeatedly suffer heat exhaustion, severe fatigue, stomach complaints, dizziness and fainting after hours in the sun. Without rest areas or first-aid facilities, an injury or sudden illness can turn into a long journey in search of the nearest health unit.
Working conditions and violations in the fields
Mai Saleh, director of the Women, Work and Economic Rights programme at the New Woman Foundation, says agricultural workers face overlapping risks that begin when they leave home and continue throughout the working day, amid the absence of basic occupational safety and health standards.
She tells Zawia3 that these include pesticides, long hours in extreme heat, inadequate drinking water and water for personal hygiene, and the absence of toilets and changing areas. Workers also face hazards from knives and harvesting equipment, snake and insect bites, and unsafe transport in overcrowded vehicles travelling between villages and farms over unpaved roads.
She says Observatory 190, which monitors irregular employment, has documented the effects of rising temperatures and climate change on street workers and agricultural workers in recent years. Women and girls in agriculture are among the most exposed.
Saleh also points to widespread child labour. The observatory has documented children working from the ages of six and seven; at some sites, a 15-year-old girl is among the oldest workers. Employers rely on children as cheap labour without recognised rights, she says.
She cites a 15-year-old tomato picker who lacked sufficient food and drinking water. The girl and her colleagues ate unwashed tomatoes straight from the field despite pesticide residues and high salt levels. Saleh says the girl developed serious mouth problems and kidney damage linked to repeated exposure. She describes this as one example among many cases affecting women and girls without protection.
Human-rights lawyer Entissar al-Saeed, chair of the Cairo Foundation for Development and Law, says women agricultural workers are especially vulnerable during heatwaves because they work long hours in open fields. She lists heat exhaustion, heatstroke, dehydration, low blood pressure and fainting, as well as heightened risks to the kidneys when workers lose fluids without enough drinking water.
Heat stress occurs when the body cannot adequately release excess heat because of hot weather, humidity or intense physical exertion. Severe fatigue, headaches, dizziness and muscle cramps can accompany the loss of fluids and salts; severe heat illness can progress to life-threatening heatstroke.
The danger is heightened in strenuous outdoor work, including fields and construction sites, as well as other hot workplaces. Older people, children and people with chronic illnesses are especially vulnerable. As extreme climatic events increase, occupational heat has become a social and economic challenge as well as a health problem, requiring stronger protection in workplaces.
Al-Saeed tells Zawia3 that pregnant women continuing to work in the same conditions face additional risks. Agricultural workers are also exposed to pesticides, whose health effects may interact with high temperatures and compound occupational hazards.
The research and estimates cited in the Arabic report project hundreds of additional heat-related illness cases annually by 2030, and a possible 300% rise in mortality by 2100 under a 3°C warming scenario. Other estimates cited there suggest 2,000–5,000 additional deaths annually in Egypt and economic losses of EGP 20–48 billion a year. These are projections under particular assumptions, not recorded annual outcomes. Heat-related illness projections. Egypt climate-impact estimates.
The risks extend beyond heat. Zawia3 reviewed published accident reports and official Ministry of Labour statements covering the past three years. It documented at least seven major agricultural-worker transport accidents between March 2024 and May 2026, with 23 deaths and at least 95 injuries, mainly in collisions or overturning pickup trucks used to take workers to farms, including in Beheira, Menoufia and Minya.
Where are the protections?
Saleh holds agricultural landowners responsible for a substantial part of these conditions. Occupational health and safety are not among their priorities, she argues, requiring firmer government intervention. “It makes no sense for labour laws and national strategies to focus only on factory and company owners while agriculture is excluded. A landowner is also an employer, and the people working for them are wage workers entitled to a safe environment.”
She calls for landowners to provide basic services: changing areas, clean water for drinking and personal hygiene, and suitable toilets. Many women are allowed only a limited number of toilet visits because the time taken to reach them is deducted from their daily wage. This particularly harms pregnant women and workers with conditions such as diabetes who need more frequent access.
Starting early is not sufficient protection, she adds. Some landowners begin work at six in the morning, forcing women to leave home at three or four. Yet the day is not shortened: employers use the cooler early hours and then continue work long afterwards.
Effective protection requires shaded rest areas, regular breaks, and the ability to drink water, wash and use toilets throughout the day. Saleh also criticises transport arrangements, saying contractors and landowners treat workers as instruments of production rather than people with rights.
“A vehicle intended for twenty people must not carry sixty or seventy workers standing throughout the journey under the sun,” she says. Overcrowding increases the risk of overturning and of accidents becoming mass-casualty disasters. Repeated crashes reflect inadequate supervision and enforcement of safety standards.
Saleh calls for the rapid introduction of a national occupational safety and health strategy explicitly covering agriculture. Social and health insurance should be expanded to agricultural workers. Although social-insurance law theoretically allows their enrolment, many fear losing Takaful and Karama assistance. She proposes a mechanism allowing workers to combine support and insurance rather than choose between them.
Part of the solution, she adds, is enabling trade unions or organisations representing small farmers and agricultural workers to negotiate minimum working conditions with landowners, particularly hours during extreme heat.
If the usual working day is eight hours, she argues, it is unacceptable to maintain that schedule unchanged in July and August. She calls for a reduction of at least two hours on the hottest days to limit heatstroke, fainting, heat exhaustion, dehydration, high blood pressure and complications that can damage kidney function.
Landowners should face legal accountability like other employers, Saleh says. Labour law requires establishments to protect workers against biological, chemical and physical hazards. These obligations must be applied in agriculture, with penalties and fines for violations.
Al-Saeed says Egyptian labour law recognises high temperatures as a workplace hazard requiring preventive measures. But recent climatic extremes make a specialised implementing regulation or national guide necessary for outdoor workers, particularly in agriculture.
Such rules should clearly regulate hours during heatwaves, require drinking water, shaded rest areas and regular breaks, and establish rapid-response arrangements for heat exhaustion and heatstroke on site.
She calls for an integrated national plan: early heatwave warnings, adjusted summer hours, permanent drinking-water points in fields, closer oversight of employers and the inclusion of agricultural labour in social protection.
She also urges the Ministry of Health to intensify awareness campaigns in farming areas, deploy mobile medical teams and train workers to recognise heat illness and follow appropriate response protocols, reducing complications and deaths.
Al-Saeed points to measures taken in Spain and Italy, including suspending some agricultural activities during peak heat and restricting work under specified extreme conditions to protect workers’ health.
Serious health consequences
Occupational-health specialists warn that prolonged exposure to high temperatures can cause complications ranging from heat exhaustion and severe dehydration to electrolyte imbalance and heatstroke, which can cause unconsciousness or death without prompt medical intervention.
Dr Tamer Sheraki, an occupational safety and health consultant, tells Zawia3 that heat stress can become a direct, potentially fatal threat. Excessive sweating and the loss of water and salts can disrupt the body’s essential functions as its internal temperature rises.
He describes heat cramps associated with salt imbalance, heat exhaustion with severe fatigue, dizziness and heavy sweating, and heatstroke that may involve loss of consciousness and organ failure. Ignoring early symptoms delays intervention and increases the danger. These describe possible manifestations of heat illness, rather than a sequence that every patient necessarily follows.
Early warning signs can include fatigue, headache, nausea, heavy sweating, a rapid heartbeat and dizziness; severe cases may involve convulsions or altered consciousness. Sheraki identifies very high body temperature with cessation of sweating as a serious warning. Heatstroke can also occur while a person is still sweating, so continued sweating does not exclude an emergency.
Prolonged exposure to heat and humidity, especially during strenuous outdoor work, is a principal cause. Heavy or unsuitable clothing further increases the burden, he says. NIOSH guidance on heatstroke symptoms.
Several countries have reconsidered occupational rules in response. Spain, Greece and Italy have introduced restrictions on outdoor work during extreme heat, while Saudi Arabia and the United Arab Emirates apply summer midday work bans. At the time of the Arabic report, Egypt had no announced agricultural protocols requiring employers to adjust or suspend work when temperatures cross specified thresholds.
The nature of farm work compounds exposure. Women spend hours bending to harvest, carrying crates and collecting crops. These activities generate additional body heat, while limited rest and shade make it harder to cool down. European occupational-safety guidance.
Studies cited in the report link repeated work in hot environments and recurrent fluid loss to increased risks of chronic kidney disease, cardiovascular illness and adverse pregnancy outcomes, including premature birth and low birth weight.
Heat also changes workers’ ability to work. Physical capacity declines as temperatures rise, yet most women cannot shorten their day because they are paid by the day or by output. Choosing between health and income becomes a daily dilemma imposed by working conditions.
Women agricultural workers’ experience exposes the absence of climate and social justice. As heatwaves intensify, women continue bearing a heavy physical and health burden under financial pressure and without adequate formal protection.
