Temperatures are set based on formulas that aimed to optimize employees' thermal comfort, a neutral condition of the body when it doesn't have to shiver to produce heat because it's too cold or sweat because it's too hot. It's based on four environmental factors: air temperature, radiant temperature, air velocity and humidity. And two personal factors: clothing and metabolic rate, the amount of energy required by the body to function.
The problem, according to a study in Nature Climate Change on Monday, is that metabolic rates can vary widely across humans based on a number of factors -- size, weight, age, fitness level and the type of work being done -- and today's standards are based on the assumption that every worker is, you guessed it, a man.
Or if you want to be really specific, a 40-year-old, 154-pound man.
...
Kingma and van Marken Lictenbelt's work builds on research out of Japan which found that the neutral temperature for Japanese women was 77.36 degrees (Fahrenheit) while it was 71.78 for European and North American males.
5.58 degrees is a significant difference. Is it better for half the people in the office to be sweaty than half the people in the office to be chilly?
(Score: 2, Informative) by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday August 05 2015, @05:58PM
Nice equivocation there. You are not an idiot. I am certain you realize that the term patriarchy has a purely negative connotation towards men having power as used today and is no longer the neutral definition that you have posited. And please, show me a married man in the western world that is in total control of their own life, let alone the lives of their family. Women rule the world by proxy, always have.
Also, "there is no such thing as mysogyny because it is not in the dictionary". Yet there are indeed people in the world that are sexist towards men. Funny how dictionaries and reality don't match.
(Score: 4, Touché) by DeathMonkey on Wednesday August 05 2015, @06:39PM
Nice equivocation there. You are not an idiot. I am certain you realize that the term patriarchy has a purely negative connotation towards men having power as used today...
No equivocation. I addressed, directly, the accusation of "flawed historical analysis."
"there is no such thing as mysogyny because it is not in the dictionary" Yet there are indeed people in the world that are sexist towards men
Try spelling it correctly. [merriam-webster.com]
Or, perhaps try learning the actual term for it (also in the dictionary) [merriam-webster.com]
(Score: 2) by gidds on Thursday August 06 2015, @12:17PM
[gasp]
You can't spell it 'misogyny'! That starts with 'mis', which sounds like 'miss', which is a derogatory term for a female of a certain age and/or marital status — neither of which are any of your business!!!
[sig redacted]