Culture
Offices Aren't Designed for Women in General
It’s not just A/C: Despite women having made huge gains in the labor force, office infrastructure hasn’t caught up.
On Monday, the Internet went wild over a new study about ice-cold office temperatures. After all, what desk jockey can’t relate to the sensation of shivering indoors when it’s a solid 40 degrees hotter outside?
The study, published Monday in the journal Nature Climate Change, reported that the ideal workplace temperatures—which hover between 68 and 76 degrees Fahrenheit—were calculated in the 1960s based on the model of a 40-year-old, 154-pound man. What the authors found is that the formula doesn’t account for metabolic differences that impact the way women experience temperatures.