Women Freeze in Offices as Air Conditioning Is Designed for Middle-Aged White Men, Study

Workplaces may be freezing for women, as the air-conditioning is designed for male bodies, according to dailymail. Temperature levels are tweaked to suit the preferences of middle-aged males.

That is why most women are probably freezing, and end up wearing their coats in offices.

"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," according to theindependent.

Hence, current air conditioning standards are based on research in the 1960s, which used a "standard metabolic rate" to achieve a "comfortable working temperature". The metabolic rate is the speed at which our bodies burn energy, also a clue to how much heat our bodies produce.

However, the study was based more on what 40-year-old men felt, although women's rates are typically 35 per cent lower. Currently, scientists from Maastricht University in the Netherlands agree that women prefer warmer working temperatures and would like to be in a room of 25C (77F) compared with 22C (72F) for men.

After observing 16 young women in an office, they found that the women needed less air conditioning than men. The authors of the study have suggested that standard settings should be changed so that gender differences can be factored.

In '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."

Moreover, the older you grow, the lower your metabolic rate would be, which would lead to even older employees requiring less air conditioning.

"'Therefore current indoor climate standards may intrinsically misrepresent thermal demand of the female and senior populations," the scientists said. "Comfort models need either to be recalibrated or enhanced using a biophysical approach."