Why women wear coats in the office
|Published
While more than half blamed their stress on unrealistic deadlines or workload, as well as long working hours, just under half said a lack of support or training contributed to their ill health. While more than half blamed their stress on unrealistic deadlines or workload, as well as long working hours, just under half said a lack of support or training contributed to their ill health.
London - If your office is a constant battle ground over the air conditioning, scientists may have worked out why.
Workplaces could be too cold for women because temperature levels are based on the preferences of a middle-aged male.
It means many women could be working in conditions several degrees cooler than they would like – and could explain why so many end up wearing their coats at their desk.
Current air conditioning standards are the result of research from the 1960s, which used a standard “metabolic rate” to work out a comfortable working temperature. Metabolic rate is the speed at which our bodies burn energy, and is key to how much heat we generate.
But the study was based on the values for a 40-year-old man – whereas women have a rate that is typically 35 percent lower.
And now researchers from Maastricht University in the Netherlands say that women do indeed prefer warmer working temperatures, favouring a room of 25C (77F) compared with 22C (72F) for men. They analysed 16 young women performing light office work, and found they required considerably less cooling than current air conditioning guidelines suggest.
The study authors have now called for standard settings to be altered to take gender differences into account.
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.”
They added that metabolic rate also lowers with age, meaning older employees could equally be feeling the chill.
“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.”
A commentary piece in the journal said the results could impact future evaluations of temperature settings. It said: “These findings could be significant for the revision of thermal standards because of opportunities to improve the office workers’ comfort.”
Daily Mail