Are air conditioners sexist?

Skanky Vamp

Skanky Vamp

Sniffin' the Slayer
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Black Thorn
It’s true, women really are being frozen out of the workplace. Office air-conditioning systems discriminate against shivering female staff because they are calibrated to match the metabolic rate of a 40 year-old man. Warm-blooded men who luxuriate in the ice-cold temperatures of an air-con system operating at full blast in the height of summer are doing so at the expense of their pashmina-wrapped female colleagues.

Indoor climate control systems are based on the resting metabolic rate of an average 40-year-old man, who is likely to feel more comfortable at a lower temperature than women, say scientists.
A study of 16 young women performing light office work showed that they were at risk of being over-chilled by air conditioning in summer, Nature Climate Change reported.

Their metabolic rates, significantly lower than the “standard values” currently employed to set office temperatures, suggested they required less cooling in summer than men.
Current air conditioning standards are derived from research conducted in the 1960s that assessed the “thermal comfort” of 1,300 mainly sedentary students. It took into account a value for metabolic rate, which was based on the resting metabolic rate of one 70 kilogram (11 stone) 40-year-old man.

more info here

I have issues with this because of the generalities. Granted, it's a small sample size but the women here like it cooler than the men. And my business partner has his personal heater running when it's 80 degrees outside. I think it's nurture vs nature as far as conditioned air goes.

So, just curious, I'd like to do an informal study to see how much it differs from location and demographics: age/sex/location/preferred temperature
 
It's about data gathering and the fact that no data was ever, or has ever, been gathered about women and air conditioning because men are the default human when it comes to any form of technology. It may turn out that women love to freeze in the office, but we don't know because no one has bothered asking women or gathering/using any data.

Personally, on a very anecdotal level, all the women I know love the heat and will turn up the heating in the office. When they hit menopause they turn it down, then once they are cool, they'll turn it up again.

I actually hate travelling in cars with men, the always turn the heating down and open the window, when I'm often freezing 😁
 
Skanky Vamp
Skanky Vamp
age/sex/location/preferred temperature me!
Basically people find different temperatures preferable. What's stopping the women getting up and turning the air conditioner down or changing the setting to a more comfortable one?

People need to stop claiming everything is sexist/racist/transphobic etc.
 
I used to meet up with a woman at conferences who worked at NASA Langley who had gone to university in Florida. She said she had an agreement with her roommate that they would leave the air conditioning off at all times except when they were studying for exams. She said it took a while but she finally got acclimated to the heat and humidity and this worked out for her.

It sounds like anyone can get used to anything - my daughter said there was one girl in her graduate class at University of Victoria who was out in a t-shirt and shorts when the rest of them were bundled up. It turns out she was originally from Thunder Bay on the west end of Lake Superior and she was used to the cold.

Women have more options for dress code than men - if they wear a dress or skirt and leave their legs bare, this transfers a lot of heat out of the body. A men's cut t-shirt has the sleeves going halfway down the bicep whereas a woman's t-shirt barely covers the shoulder. Women's underwear is almost not there thermally whereas men's underwear is usually cotton and fairly warm. If you dress for the situation you are in, you should be comfortable.
 
Ethan Reigns said:
If you dress for the situation you are in, you should be comfortable.
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I wish I could tell that to my co-worker.

He is SO whiny about it being cold all the time, we have this discussion almost daily.
Yeah well, you're in a 200 year old, poorly ventilated, house and its -15 outside, this happens every winter, wear a gorram sweater and stop insisting it is your right to be comfortable in a thin t-shirt at all times!


I also question the "thermal" nature of men's underwear contra female, but that's just me.
 
I didn't know people honestly wore thermal underwear. Thought it was just a joke. Only people I know that were them were hunters.
 
I'm wearing thermal underwear right now. I actually wear them every day during the winter because I am a really cold person.
 
Spanky said:
That doesn't surprise me.
You prolly got matching mittens and earmuffs.
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Actually, I do! And matching socks too! Anyone who wants to be real cute and warm should look up Kari Traa 😀
 
Taake said:
Anyone who wants to be real cute and warm should look up Kari Traa 😀
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I'd rather be cold, as I am now, than wear that stuff.

I do really like these
640135_VANDRE_OCEAN_MODEL_1_Karitraa.jpg
 
Yep, if I was at work I would be wearing thermals too, it's an old, cold building.
 
nightshade said:
Yep, if I was at work I would be wearing thermals too, it's an old, cold building.
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When I was outfitting the offices here I thought it would be cool to get these big glass desks. They look awesome. I didn't think about putting a big glass desk in front of a big glass window and how in the winter you'd be freezing your glass off.
 
I work outside a lot, so in winter I often wear thermals, especially on a nightshift.
 
I really can't function in the heat but tend not to mind the cold that much. I put that down to being born in the North of Scotland during one of the coldest winters on record.

That being said, I worked in Saudi Arabia for a while & the hotel I was staying in used to adjust the Air-con in the room every day 'For my comfort'

They must have thought, He's a Brit, it's always cold & miserable there lets make him feel at home by making his room sub-zero!

Every time I got back to my room the Air-con would be virtually blowing snow.....I'm actually surprised they didn't switch the sprinklers on too to give me a real feeling of home! 😏
 
This is blaming the machine when the programmer is at fault! Someone sets the temperature, and I have seen studies that standard office temp tends to favor men's preferences. However, as a woman, my opinion is that it's easier for people who are too cold to add clothing than for those too hot to take it off. Most offices still have this much dress code!

It's a problem in a lot of machinery that it is built largely by men, with men in mind. For instance, air bags deploy hard enough to catch an average-sized man not wearing a seat belt, so women frequently get facial bones broken in accidents from them. And clearly my grocery store thinks all its customers are six feet tall, or they wouldn't put items so high!
 
Taake said:
He is SO whiny about it being cold all the time, we have this discussion almost daily.
Yeah well, you're in a 200 year old, poorly ventilated, house and its -15 outside, this happens every winter, wear a gorram sweater and stop insisting it is your right to be comfortable in a thin t-shirt at all times!
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Stake fodder said:
However, as a woman, my opinion is that it's easier for people who are too cold to add clothing than for those too hot to take it off. Most offices still have this much dress code!
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Our office can get a bit warm or stuffy at times and the men tend to want the window open for some fresh air and the women tend to want it closed because then it is too cold.

It makes sense to me that if we keep the window open and the women who get cold wear a jumper then everybody is happy, but apparently that is sexist !! Although not quite sure why especially as women already get more flexibility in what they can wear in a lot of offices
 
I don't know how relevant this anecdote I'm about to share is as even though she was a transwoman, she hadn't gone through the surgery (but was taking pills of all sorts, and working toward surgery)...and maybe even after surgery it wouldn't make a difference (just like she wouldn't start menstruating).

But I remember how she complained of how cold it could be in a dress, so I even helped her get some snug tights to go with her dress. It works for me (it can be warmer than pants). And I grew up in Texas, though I did get climatized to colder regions of the Pacific Northwest by then. She had more muscle and body fat than me. But even in tights, she was the one shivering while I was the one perfectly comfortable. I couldn't make sense out of it, though innate gender differences that can't be altered could be a reason...but that would contradict the above.

(And it's not like we're components off an assembly line, it's probably different person to person combined with genetic and environmental factors more than gender, but maybe gender is part of the equation, probably a minor factor at best.

EDITED: I just checked, and it's more complicated than all of that. In general women retain more heat at the core but not extremities, and to my surprise, those with more body fat like the transwoman I mentioned are the same regardless of gender, but there are many other factors, with even nicotine in the body of smokers making a difference, along with general physical activity, which many who spend a lot of makeup are generally going to avoid, but I'm physically active myself and only rarely have to worry about makeup.)

Though I know the kind of people who come up with crap like that report and am dismissive of them.
 
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