Indoor climate control systems are partly based on the resting metabolic rate of an average 40-year-old man, say scientists.
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They say this suggests that they may require lower levels of cooling in the summer to feel comfortable.
Maybe that man once represented most people in offices.
The study has hence concluded that buildings should, “reduce gender-discriminating bias in thermal comfort”.
So while men are comfortable in the workplace, the majority of women would need conditions to be almost four degrees warmer, leaving them forced to don jumpers and cardigans in the summer to keep warm.
And their metabolic rates, significantly lower than the “standard values” used to set office temperatures, suggested they required less cooling in summer than men. Instruments in the chamber calculated their metabolic rates by measuring the women’s oxygen consumption and carbon dioxide production.
Because we’re using more energy trying to keep men cool we’re warming the planet.
“In principle, it’s a handsome standard, based on thermodynamics – the heat balance between the body and the environment”, Boris Kingma, a biologist at Maastricht University Medical Center in the Netherlands and coauthor of the study, published Monday, told Business Insider. In the 1960s, this Danish scientist developed a model, still used in many office buildings around the world, which predicts comfortable indoor temperatures for the average worker. “The cleavage is closer to the core of the body, so the temperature difference between the air temperature and the body temperature there is higher when it’s cold”.
“These findings could be significant for the next round of revisions of thermal comfort standards, [but] a large-scale re-evaluation in field studies may be needed in order to sufficiently convince real-estate developers, standard committees and building services engineers”, Joost van Hoof, of Fontys University of Applied Sciences in the Netherlands, wrote in an accompanying commentary.
On the other hand, more men than women reported it was too hot (15 versus 6) or just right (30 versus 13).
Perhaps it is time to change the formula and consider the metabolic rates of professional women everywhere. Kingma said a woman might prefer a 75-degree room, while a man might prefer about 70 degrees, which Kingma said is a common current office temperature. Given these factors, he added, “whether this actually affects energy, I think that’s a big leap”.
It’s understandable, then, how women could be left feeling out in the cold.
Kimberly Mark would appreciate that.
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“I wore a dress once and had to go change”, said McPherson, who attended college in New Hampshire. And when that and hot coffee fail, she said, McPherson nuzzles against a white fake-fur wall in the office.
