Office temperatures routinely set too low for many women, research shows

People have different temperature preferences, and there are all sorts of complicating factors: Some parts of the building will be cooler than others, and people themselves can generate lots of heat, depending on what sort of activity they’re doing.

Women may have finally smashed through the glass ceiling to join men in the boardroom but when it comes to office temperatures they are yet to come in from the cold.

As reported by the Times, the study says setting warmer temperatures increases thermal comfort and helps fight global warming.

Writing in the journal Nature Climate Change, Dr Boris Kingma and Professor Wouter van Marken Lichtenbelt said: ‘Thermal comfort models need to adjust the current metabolic standard by including the actual values for females.’.

A study published Monday shows that most office buildings set temperatures based on an old formula that uses the metabolic rates of men.

“These findings could be significant for the next round of revisions of thermal comfort standards – which are on a constant cycle of revision and public review – because of the opportunities to improve the comfort of office workers and the potential for reducing energy consumption”, said Dr Joost van Hoof, from Fontys University of Applied Sciences in the Netherlands.

Women usually have slower metabolic rates than men, as they are generally smaller and have more body fat.

The model is based on factors like air temperature, air speed, relative humidity, clothing, and the rate at which our bodies make heat, otherwise known as our metabolism.

Kingma and his colleagues examined the physiology of 16 lightly clothed women who performed light office work in a climate chamber. Based on what can only be called a tiny pilot experiment (see below), they calculated that the now used measure might overestimate metabolic rate for this group by 20 to 32 percent. It’s an equation that estimates whether a large group of people will vote whether the temperature is neutral, hot, or cold, on a scale that runs from -3.0 to 3.0. Their skin temperature was measured on their hands and abdomen.

Men typically have more heat generating muscle than women and so feel comfortable at cooler temperatures. Body size also influences how quickly a person warms up, people who weigh more, get hotter faster. Conversely, those who are overweight and women in menopause would prefer it colder.

They claim it would not only make staff more comfortable but could also cut emissions.

As stated by the researchers, the current system “may cause buildings to be intrinsically non-energy-efficient in providing comfort to females”. So, women, if there is a chilly environment in the office, do not just blame the men, educate the management about the situation. Author Margaret Atwood, when painting a picture of a sort of techno-utopia divorced from our need from oil, imagines office workers “using low-draw lightbulbs – incandescents have been banned – and energy-efficient heating systems, including pellet stoves, radiant panels, and long underwear”.