Chilly offices: Why air conditioning settings ignore women's needs

The temperatures commonly used and recommended for air conditioning settings unfavourably affect women. This issue extends beyond mere comfort to include efficiency as well.

Ever find yourself chilling to the bone in your office during summer? If you're a woman, it's likely your answer is "yes." Older adults, both men and women, might also feel sidelined by the prevailing air conditioning settings. The popular 21-22 degrees Celsius office settings are uncomfortably cool for most, except perhaps for middle-aged men.

Searching Google for the optimal air conditioning temperature yields results suggesting a range of 18-23 degrees Celsius. However, at the Leadership Summit in 2023, Australian writer Jamila Rizvi pointed out that these recommendations are tailored to the metabolic rate of a 40-year-old man.

The slower metabolic rates of women and the elderly are better suited to warmer temperatures. The issue is not only about comfort but also about mental efficiency. A 2019 study titled "Battle for the thermostat: Gender and the effect of temperature on cognitive performance," conducted by scientists from Maastricht University in the Netherlands, demonstrated how women and men perform at various temperatures. The findings were shared on the scientific portal journals.plos.org.

Participants in the study were tasked with simple mathematical calculations and generating as many words as possible from a set of letters. The study verified that while men performed best around 22 degrees Celsius, women's optimal performance occurred at 25 degrees Celsius. After adjusting for temperature effects, the performance gap between women and men in task-solving abilities was negligible.

It's an open secret that lowering the air conditioning in summer costs more. It is also less environmentally friendly, considering the electricity needed to sustain the lower indoor temperatures against the warmer outdoors. It's wise to reassess the thermostat settings, particularly in environments predominantly staffed by women.

Source: huffingtonpost.co.uk, journals.plos.org.