Cold offices are hindering women

I have never worked in an office where everyone agreed on the temperature. Women often sit with sweaters draped around their shoulder, or sometimes, blankets brought in from home. Now, studies show that cold rooms may affect women's work and productivity. How do you handle the "battle of the thermostat" in your office? Any tips for making the workplace comfortable for ALL employees?

Ladies, is your office too cold? And who decides on the temperature, anyway? It might behoove you to find out.

Ladies, is your office too cold? And who decides on the temperature, anyway? It might behoove you to find out.

I won't lie, I'd rather be cold than hot. Though, as a remote employee, this is not something i have to worry about as my office mate / dog prefers it to be on the chilly side too. Edit: corrected grammatical mistake.

Science has ended the age old office debate! "For women, the increase in performance while working in warmer temperatures was “significantly larger” than the decrease in male performance."

Ladies, is your office too cold? And who decides on the temperature, anyway? It might behoove you to find out.

Battle of the Termostat: Cold Rooms May Hurt Women’s Productivity True story: 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. This equation 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. Seems simple enough. But according to a 2015 study one variable in the formula, resting metabolic rate (how fast we generate heat), is based on a 40-year-old man weighing about 154 pounds. Consequence is that this commonly used formula for office termostats overestimates women’s body heat production by 35 percent. In a new study, women scored better on tests they took in warmer rooms. In a study published Wednesday in the journal PLOS One, researchers reported that at colder temperatures, men scored higher than women on verbal and math tests. But as a room grew warmer, women’s scores rose significantly. When the temperature increases, the gender gap disappears” on the math test, and women outpace men on the verbal test. Via Pam Belluck, Veronique Greenwood, NYT

I have been saying this for years!