SoylentNews is people
SoylentNews
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: 3, Interesting) by K_benzoate on Wednesday August 05 2015, @07:13PM
The doubling of the labor force driving down wages is something that I've struggled with. I do agree with the idea that women should be allowed to choose to work if that's what they think is most fulfilling. I'm also committed to the idea that the most stable unit to raise children is one full-time worker and one full-time caregiver, at least until the child is old enough to start school. I'm not committed to any particular arrangement of the sexes within that framework. Two men, two women, one man, one woman, all seem equally effective. I would say however that children, boys especially, need a "traditionally" masculine role model. This does not necessarily have to come from one of the parents, or even a male for that matter.
Suffice to say I disagree with all sides on this debate to the point where I have almost no allies or cohorts. Liberals call me a conservative "family values" bigot, and conservatives detest my flexibility with regard to sexuality and gender roles. I like to think I look at what works and adopt it, regardless of where the idea came from. Our society seems to have done the opposite and mixed the worst aspects of every modality.
Climate change is real and primarily caused by human activity.
(Score: 2) by kurenai.tsubasa on Wednesday August 05 2015, @08:01PM
I'd like to say I agree with your position on the matter. (My only nitpick is that my hypothesis is that a child needs a role model who is the same mental gender, but we'll need to wait 20–30 years for any data to come out to test that hypothesis. Of course a role model doesn't necessarily need to be a parent, so my hypothesis wouldn't be an argument against homosexual marriage but perhaps a consideration for parents to take into account, if it's true at all.)
It's a very small part of the series, but the first episode of Madoka Magica [wikipedia.org] is just about the only instance I think I've ever seen of a “househusband.”
We opened up the workplace to women, but we neglected to open up the “kitchen,” as it were, to men.