Heat behind the hearth: Dalit women's thermal labour, nutritional trade-offs, and energy injustice in Madhesh Province, Nepal

Household energy research and clean-cooking policy have mainly treated biomass cooking as a problem of smoke exposure, while giving less attention to the heat generated by open fires and rudimentary stoves. This article examines that neglected burden through the concept of thermal labour: the embodied, temporal, and socially organised work of preparing food under prolonged cooking-zone heat. The study focuses on Dalit women in Madhesh Province, Nepal, where caste marginalisation, male labour migration, and continued dependence on biomass intersect with intensifying heat. Using an exploratory qualitative design, we conducted in-depth interviews with 17 Dalit women from biomass-reliant households and analysed the data through applied thematic analysis. Three themes were identified. First, cooking-zone heat was experienced as bodily depletion that suppressed appetite, affected women's perceived capacity to breastfeed, and encouraged meal simplification. Second, male out-migration extended thermal labour by consolidating fuel gathering, cooking, childcare, and elder care into longer and less interruptible routines. Third, access to cleaner cooking was shaped not only by affordability but also by caste-mediated documentation requirements, depot discretion, credit constraints, and limited institutional recognition of Dalit women as legitimate energy users. The findings show that household energy poverty is lived not only through smoke and fuel scarcity, but also through heat, hunger, constrained care, and unequal transition pathways. The article advances clean-cooking and energy-justice scholarship by demonstrating why cooking-zone heat and recognition justice must be incorporated into energy access research, stove evaluation, maternal-health outreach, and caste-responsive clean-cooking programmes.