Why Women are Always Freezing in Workplace Building According to Science
Last Update: 3 November, 2022•Read: 2 minutes
If you’re a woman who works in an office and you’re always freezing, you’re not alone.
If you’re a woman who works in an office and you’re always freezing, you’re not alone.
It turns out that most workplace buildings are kept at a temperature that is comfortable to the average man. But women typically produce less body heat than men, meaning they’re more likely to feel chilled in the workplace building, a new study finds.
And there could be an added benefit to fixing the thermostat besides keeping more people comfortable: If we adjusted our office temperatures to better match women’s needs, it could save a lot of energy, researchers say.
Workplace buildings all over the world adhere to an indoor temperature standard determined by a model developed in the 1960s by the American Society of Heating, Refrigerating and Air-Conditioning Engineers. 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.
“In principle, it’s is beautiful 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 co-author of the study, published Monday, told Business Insider. However, anecdotal evidence suggests that women feel colder lot more often than men, Kingma said.
If you’re a woman who works in an office and you’re always freezing, you’re not alone.
It turns out that most workplace buildings are kept at a temperature that is comfortable to the average man. But women typically produce less body heat than men, meaning they’re more likely to feel chilled in the workplace building, a new study finds.
And there could be an added benefit to fixing the thermostat besides keeping more people comfortable: If we adjusted our office temperatures to better match women’s needs, it could save a lot of energy, researchers say.
Workplace buildings all over the world adhere to an indoor temperature standard determined by a model developed in the 1960s by the American Society of Heating, Refrigerating and Air-Conditioning Engineers. 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.
“In principle, it’s is beautiful 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 co-author of the study, published Monday, told Business Insider. However, anecdotal evidence suggests that women feel colder lot more often than men, Kingma said.
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