Researchers: The Thermostat In Your Office May Be Sexist

sciencehabit writes: If you're constantly bundling up against your office building's air conditioning, blame Povl Ole Fanger. In the 1960s, this Danish scientist developed a model, still used in many office buildings around the world, which predicts comfortable indoor temperatures for the average worker. The problem? The average office worker in the 1960s was a 40-year-old man sporting a three-piece suit. But fear not, those for whom the 'work sweater' has become a mandatory addition to office attire: Researchers say they have built a better model.

Comments

Re:Peh

[AmiMoJo]

Indeed, calling this "sexist" just devalues the word. It's based on old data and demographics have changed, that's all. Only a refusal to acknowledge that and act on it might be considered sexist.

Re:Peh

[beelsebob]

It's not really old data, it's just that the modern author hasn't considered the practicalities of the situation.

Offices *still* have 40 year old men (and 20 year old ones, and 50 year old ones) in them, it just happens they have a bunch of women too. Those men can not remove clothes to become cooler without incurring the wrath of HR (quite rightly). Those women can add clothes to solve being too cold. Simply averaging the temperature people want the office to be set to does not make everyone comfortable, it just makes a bunch of mean sweaty and sleepy, with no way to correct for it.

Re:Peh

[Ol Olsoc]

It's not really old data, it's just that the modern author hasn't considered the practicalities of the situation.

Offices *still* have 40 year old men (and 20 year old ones, and 50 year old ones) in them, it just happens they have a bunch of women too.

So how do we manages this so as not to be a part of the Patriarchy and it's incessant microagressions?

Do we adjust the temperature to suit the one lady in my office who likes it at 80 degrees?

Do we adjust it to another lady who likes it at 68 degrees?

Or how about the one who likes it the way it's set now? Is she a dupe of the male dominated hegemony, and a traitor to her sisters?

Even if my personal experience of a slim majority of women preferring temperatures higher than what I like, calling the temp settings sexist merely shows the lengths that people will go to when they want to feel oppressed.

I'm envisioning Big Red freaking out about a one degree too low thermostat setting, and how little girls are set up for a lifetime of subservience and disappointment when they notice the thermostat at home is set up as the patriarch demands it.

So - can you tell a persons gender by the temperature thay are most comfortable? tl;dr version. This is bullshit - non gender biased human entities happen to have different temperatures at which they are most comfortable.