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Oh, how the news media love the “thermostat wars” between men and women. It’s a good source of stories based on conventional wisdom and the occasional (faulty or incomplete) research paper. The utility companies want in on the action, too. I’ve seen television ads for gas companies trying to convince viewers that just switching fuels will eliminate the battle over the thermostat. But do women really need warmer temperatures than men?
Decades of research on thermal comfort
Guess what. The idea that men and women have widely different internal thermostats is dead wrong. Let’s clear this up with the summary from the ASHRAE Handbook of Fundamentals. Based on many decades of research, they say:
The experiments show that men and women prefer almost the same thermal environments. Women’s skin temperature and evaporative loss are slightly lower than those for men, and this balances the somewhat lower metabolism of women. The reason that women often prefer higher ambient temperatures than men may be partly explained by the lighter clothing often worn by women.
The image above of two newscasters talking about the “Battle of the Thermostat” couldn’t make the point any better. The man is wearing a button down shirt, tie, and coat (and probably an undershirt as well) while the woman is a wearing a sleeveless blouse or dress.
Six factors of comfort
ASHRAE’s thermal comfort standard lists six factors that affect our comfort. They are:
- 代谢速率
- Clothing insulation
- Air temperature
- Radiant temperature
- 空速
- Humidity
The first two are personal factors. Metabolic rate is a measure of your energy use. Recall that your body is a heat engine, turning fuel into mechanical energy and heat. It’s similar to a power plant turning fuel (e.g., coal or gas) into heat that spins a turbine that generates electricity. Not all the heat can turn into usable energy, however, so a human body and a power plant both must deal with that excess heat somehow. Remember,you need cooling! And the higher your metabolic rate, the more cooling you need. Your metabolic rate depends on the nature of your particular body—everyone is different—and on your activity level.
Clothing, of course, insulates the body from its surroundings. In winter, that’s a good thing. In summer, it can slow down the body’s cooling process. We all know that when you’re too warm, you can take off excess clothing to cool off. No mystery here.
最后四个是环境因素，对男性的影响与影响女性的影响不会有所不同。上面的ASHRAE声明清楚了。
So, the next time you’re in a room with a man who happens to feel warmer than a woman, don’t automatically jump to the conclusion that it’s simply because he’s a man and needs lower air temperatures to feel cool enough. When you account for all of the factors of comfort, both personal and environmental, the research is clear. So, do women need warmer temperatures than men? No.
Note:如果您想深入研究这个话题，并真正学习如何将热舒适的原则应用于建筑物，请自己获得Robert Bean的免费书籍的副本，Thermal Comfort Principles and Practical Applications for Residential Buildings．(Yes, it’s free!)
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Allison Bailesof Atlanta, Georgia, is a speaker, writer, building science consultant, and the founder of Energy Vanguard. He has a PhD in physics and writes the能源先锋博客．He is also写一本关于建筑science．你可以在推特上跟随他@EnergyVanguard．
11 Comments
Ashrae's research seems to contradict every other study I have read, and certainly contradicts my (anecdotal) experience:
https://www.mcgill.ca/oss/article/health/i-am-woman-why-am-i-always-so-cold
https://www.theatlantic.com/health/archive/2019/05/warm-offices-women-productivity/589966/
https://inews.co.uk/news/long-reads/the-evolutionary-reasons-why-women-feel-the-cold-more-than-men-1239135
Regardless of potential gender-specific differences, I do find that it's essential to keep typical clothing in mind when determining the temperature of any shared space.
Case in point, I work in a software development office and we moved into a new building 10 years ago. When we first moved in, the constant complaint was how frigid it was. You'd see people wearing jackets and others would literally stuff the AC vents with paper towel to stifle the flow.
The building folks finally did a survey after many many complaints and ultimately adjusted the temperature to a notable number of degrees higher. The problem? They were setting the initial temperature to the "standard" office temperatures, which assumed a bunch of guys in full multi-layer suits. We're modern day software geeks -- the standard uniform in our office is shorts or jeans and a t-shirt!
Does it really matter if ASHRAE or the AMA come up with 1,000 studies that "prove" men and women have legitimate "thermostat wars"? The bottom line is that when your wife or girlfriend asks you to raise the temperature, you do it... or risk sleeping in the dog house. No studies needed!
Seems to me the elephant in the room is body weight, is it not most often the skinny gal in a short skirt with a space heater under her desk complaining about being cold?
Walta
作为一个瘦小的家伙，他在大学毕业后与其他夫妇分享了一所房子，所以这是一个非常瘦的朋友。我总是感到寒冷，虽然他们在温度接近70时都会抱怨热量。我们都穿着类似的衣服，他们只有一层额外的内置绝缘层！
当然，另一个因素是适应 - 我认为人们通常可以习惯于他们通常想象的。最好的例子是可以观察到的 - 每年春季，第一个50度的一天都感觉非常宜人，但是几个月后，相同的50度是一个寒冷的秋天。
When my mom was in the workforce, she had a good point: while men wear long pants, thick socks and solid shoes or boots in winter, women often wear skirts, thin socks (or no socks) and lightweight shoes. Air near the floor is colder than air higher in the room. I'm just guessing but I bet the coanda effect pushes drafts along floors. So although it's not biologically based, choice of clothing seems to have an effect. Fortunately that's easily addressed. (Or is it?)
I'm not in a position to intelligently parse all the research, but what worries me is that it allows us to dismiss women's concerns about their environment by telling them they have no scientific basis - and historically that has happened all too often. So if ASHRAE is going to provide a basis for that, it better be unassailable - which I'm not at all convinced is the case.
Agreed. Interesting that bodily autonomy is contested in something as inherently subjective as thermal comfort.
I generally favor micro-zoning which is easy to do with hydronics. Each room has its own thermostat, including each bathroom. This allow for individual preference, plus for warm feet on these cool fall mornings when the floor is heated!
More productive would be to discuss solutions. Like localized radiant panels.
Want to take a closer look?
(1) I am a scientist and haven't pored over the statistics in this article, but at first glance, the approach looks sound. The study finds women's performance suffers more than men's does at lower temperatures:https://journals.plos.org/plosone/article?id=10.1371/journal.pone.0216362．I think Joe Allen summarized this well in his "Healthy Buildings" book. When I was a postdoc at the H'd School of Public Health my male advisor allowed me (female) to keep the temp in my office ~8-10 F higher than elsewhere (it didn't help my office had a very cold window).
（2）将“衣服绝缘”称为“个人因素”，完全否认了妇女的工作或社交位置强烈压力或要求妇女穿重量更轻的许多情况。我长期以来一直在寻求正式穿着，使我足够温暖，即使在夏季AC爆炸的酒店会议空间中（寒冷，所以男人可以穿西装）。真的不存在温暖，剪得好的专业衣服。正式的社交磨损急剧更糟。我们要么为某些无文化的居民建立，要么我们承认女性如何看待温度，甚至超出生理差异，也会存在差异。
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