Oh here we go again. Not long ago, the snarky radical feminists at Jezebel posed a question on their site asking, "Is Office Air Conditioning a Sexist Conspiracy?"
As Tim Graham noted in an earlier blog, Jezebel would have you believe that yes, it's suggested that the AC is a male conspiracy to punish women at work:
“Science has already told us that women feel more sensitive to cold temperatures, which is why going to movie theater can feel like stepping into a freezer. Working in an office all day can also be torturous if you forget to bring along a sweater. Over at The Washington Post, writer Petula Dvorak theorizes that intensely cold office temperatures are yet another example of the patriarchy dominating an environment. Dvorak researching this by talking to both women and men who are outside on their breaks away from their cubicles. Many of the women were “thawing out,” trying to soak up the warm weather. When the men were asked if the temperature inside their offices was too, they had no issues. How nice for them.”
Now, not even two weeks later, Pam Belluck of The New York Times wrote an article for the front page of the paper on Tuesday titled, “Chilly at Work? Office Formula was Devised for Men.” Online it was posted in the “Science” section, suggesting the same thing as Jezebel – that the office temperature was “devised for men” and is pretty much sexist.
Belluck points to a study that was recently published in the journal Nature Climate Change that says buildings “set temperatures based on a decades-old formula that uses the metabolic rates of men. The study concludes that buildings should “reduce gender-discriminating bias in thermal comfort” because setting temperatures at slightly warmer levels can help combat global warming.”
Of course this study would mention global warming when talking cold temperatures in an office setting! The article continues:
“In a lot of buildings, you see energy consumption is a lot higher because the standard is calibrated for men’s body heat production,” said Boris Kingma, a co-author of the study and a biophysicist at Maastricht University Medical Center in the Netherlands. “If you have a more accurate view of the thermal demand of the people inside, then you can design the building so that you are wasting a lot less energy, and that means the carbon dioxide emission is less.”
The study says most building thermostats follow a “thermal comfort model that was developed in the 1960s,” which considers factors like air temperature, air speed, vapor pressure and clothing insulation, using a version of Fanger’s thermal comfort equation.
PMV = [0.303e-0.036M + 0.028]{(M – W) – 3.96E-8ƒcl[(tcl + 273)4 – (tr + 273)4] – ƒclhc(tcl – ta) – 3.05[5.73 – 0.007(M – W) – pa] – 0.42[(M – W) – 58.15] – 0.0173M(5.87 – pa) – 0.0014M(34 – ta)}
It is converted to a seven-point scale and compared against the Predicted Percentage Dissatisfied, a gauge of how many people are likely to feel uncomfortably cool or warm.
Just one thing though, Belluck points out that this entire formula was based on a 40-year old man weighing 154 pounds.
She says that many believe women are seen as “nagging” when they complain about the temperature. But, it’s more than just the formula and physiology, it’s also about the clothing one wears to the office. Often, men wear suits year round, whereas some women dress in skirts, dresses, and sandals. They also bring cleavage into the mix: “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."
So for the planet’s sake, men should “stop complaining,” Dr. Kingma said.
The experts offered another solution – change the formula:
“The researchers tested 16 women, students in their 20s, doing seated work wearing light clothes in rooms called respiration chambers, which track oxygen inhaled and carbon dioxide exhaled. Skin temperature was measured on hands, the abdomen and elsewhere. A thermometer pill the women swallowed reported internal body temperature.
Researchers found the women’s average metabolic rate was 20 to 32 percent lower than rates in the standard chart used to set building temperature. So they propose adjusting the model to include actual metabolic rates of women and men, plus factors like body tissue insulation, not just clothing. For example, people who weigh more get warmer faster, and older people have slower metabolic rates, the study reported.”
How much warmer an office would become would vary, of course, but the study cites research finding as much as a five-degree difference in women and men’s preferences. Dr. Kingma said a woman might prefer a 75-degree room, while a man might prefer about 70 degrees, which Dr. Kingma said is a common current office temperature.”
Honestly, this entire “controversy” is a whole lot of nothing. Each person is different – we weigh differently, we respond differently to room and outdoor temperatures. We all have, at one point or another, worked in offices where one area is colder than another, or the insulation isn’t as good in some buildings as others.
I’ve always been taught never to wear sleeveless clothing in the office, or if you do, wear a jacket or blazer over top of it. Then you aren’t so cold inside the office, and when you go outside, you can take it off if you choose. That’s not sexist. That’s called dressing professionally. There’s always some reason that can be found as to why it’s cold in the office– it doesn’t always have to be a “sexist” reason like The New York Times and Jezebel would like you to believe.
