Why women freeze in the office
The recommendations for ideal office temperatures are geared towards the metabolism of men. For women, this is often much too cold.
A pleasant office temperature - not too hot and not too cold - contributes a lot to the well-being at work. To achieve this, a lot of energy is expended worldwide to cool buildings, especially in summer. But the recommendations for the ideal temperature are too low, especially for women. Researchers at Maastricht University in the Netherlands have found this out.
To calculate the ideal room temperature, recommendations worldwide are based on a model from the 1960s, which is based on the metabolic rate of a 40-year-old man weighing 70 kilograms.
The Studypublished in the scientific journal Nature Climate Change, shows that the metabolic rate of women is 20 to 32% lower than assumed in the model. That is why they freeze faster at the same room temperature.
The researchers' conclusion: If the optimal room temperature were based on women instead of men, it would be possible to dispense with a large proportion of the energy required for cooling - and thus, not least, to protect the climate.
