air conditioners are being sexist to women in england

I can't believe sexism still exist

They can control the kitchen's air conditioner.

It's easier to warm up than to cool down. Chilly? Wear a sweater. What's the solution? Warm up the office so chilly women don't have to wear a sweater? Well, now you have men in business suits sweating their asses off...great solution.

I love the terminology she uses though...these women are just frozen! Haha, most offices are like 68-74 degrees with the optimum temperature for productivity being 71 degrees. That's the temp of a nice beautiful day.

It seems people like this are running out of things to complain about...

This is just part of the old power structure that still pervades in society I guess. Like the video says, all about flexibility. No reason for anyone to be freezing in a corner or sweating profusely in an office environment.

And the edit button is back.

*golf clap*

The whole premise is ridiculous but she is technically right since it's true that women do feel colder temperature-wise and from personal experience when working with female colleagues.

Seriously, I don't feel cold but whenever I work with women, they're wearing sweaters and always complaining about the cold even during the summer. I'm not saying air conditioners are sexist, it's just biological and she does speak some truth.

Everything these days seems to offend people.

I find that generalization offensive. :-/

Jesus fucking Christ what will they come up with next...

Okay, at the end of the video she suggests that they turn the AC down for women and if that makes the men hot then the men should dress in a way to stay cooler... Some people should take their own advice and stop claiming that everything is sexist.

I am one of 3 men in my work place of about 11 people and it is always roasting... Most of my job is fairly physical too while everyone else is mostly at a desk or speaking to customers but I have never once complained about the temperature.

Emergency cardigan? **** off with these first world problems.

This is incorrect. Thermodynamics tells us that a system can instantly cool, but a system requires more energy (Joules) to increase heat than to decrease heat.

Nah the guys just want to see those perky little nipples you know its true don't lie.

WTF. That was ridiculous.

That's cuz they dress like sluts.

*sigh*

Or a western cultural thing. Women far more often in my experience complain about it being cold rather than warm.

I used to give my wife crap about this until we visited a museum's interactive science exhibit. In the exhibit, they featured a thermal camera hooked up to a computer monitor. Once I got tired of making Predator jokes (like sneaking up behind her and whispering "Anytime" in her ear), she pointed out that the display for the camera showed a noticable body temperature difference between us. I showed in all white and red while she was in darker hues and her extremities, ears and nose where dark blue to black. I didn't really have a leg to stand on in the "you're not really that cold" argument anymore.

-Byshop

I could just interpret that as you having a better bloodflow to your skin than her. I guess with my gf and I it would be the opposite. I'm the one with cold hands, she is always warm.

Reason for my post is that I've read before that women tends to put on not enough/warm enough clothes because complaining about being cold is much more accepted or feminine thing to do than complain about being warm.

Wear thermals?

Old news... These nutters have been at it for a while with support from outlets like Ars Technica and The Guardian.

Edit: on the topic of women being cooler than men or men being hotter than women (puns intended), bottom line is that you can always put on more clothes but there's a hard limit to how much you can take off, not to mention that sweaty men stink.

To be fair, while correct, that's a little besides the point :) Not that I'm a thermogynamicist, but your ability to give off heat is relative to the sorrounding temperature and the insulation of your surface area.

Fine make me sweat I'll just take off my shirt and flaunt my bit ol man titties.

AC should be set at a comfortable level. Some people do feel the cold and others can feel warm with the AC at frigid. Not sure if that has anything to do with sex though.

Jeebus, way to go full thegerg on that. It's easier to warm up from a options availible perspective than to cool down, especially in an office environment. If someone is chilly, they just throw on a sweater. If someone is hot, there is nothing they can do sans taking off more clothes, which in an office environment, isn't always an option.

We're not talking about a pieces of tungsten in a vacuum lol :P

Depends. I've had people wearing sweaters complaining it was hot and wanting to freeze out everyone else.

Hey that is not so bad, in Ukraine air conditioners kill people. According to Kiev ofc.

I suppose England has sorted out the major inequality issues if this is such a big thing.

And now we are talking about humans.

And it's a proven fact that it's easier for someone to get warmer than it is for someone to get colder. IE it´s easier for someone to take on a extra shirt then it is for someone to take off clothes. Particular since many UK offices have a dress code for men that require either Smart wear or business suits

So perhaps women should come into the 21st century and stop complaining and just wear business suits like men do, you know equality and all.

What's wrong with her? Can't she keep warm by hating all the women around her like a normal woman?

So eat something. I don't hear the fat women complaining.

Isn't the common cold cased by ehinoviruses, not cold air?

@MlauTheDaft: I think that is correct, but it is not besides the point as he began by saying:

It's easier to warm up than to cool down.

Saying it is besides the point is saying that correcting him is besides the point and that does not make sense.

thegerg did not discover physics and I have yet to read a post from him speaking about it. Whether it is easier to find a sweater in comparison to turning down an air conditioner, the human body would require more energy to increase heat which brings in other factors such as need to maintain energy levels each day in the office. That might mean ingesting more nutrients in comparison to a different set of women working at a more accommodating office. If they eat high calorie, but low nutrition foods then it is plausible that they would become overweight.

There are more factors to consider than a sweater.

That is not a proven fact. That is not a fact. That is not proof. Unfortunately, that is being misinformed. It is possible to find that thermodynamics applies to humans as well. Calorimetry is a science that utilizes the laws of thermodynamics and it makes more sense.

It is besides the point, because that's exactly the context I was saying it in. I'm in awe something like that has to even be explained to you lol.

It is besides the point, because that is exactly the context I said it in. I'm in awe that you actually needed this explained to you and you took at in the sense I was speaking about the laws of thermodynamics lol. Your thegerg comment is even funnier, because that is exactly the same kind of missing the point pedantry I was referencing.

Science is not pedantry. It is looking at the big picture and energy requirements to heat up when others can do so more easily by gender is a significant difference, apparently.

Admittedly, I am not female, but I can understand the complaints.

You clearly didn't understand the context, and therefore it is pedantry. Even when another user kinda pointed out the context, you insisted again. Men and women are more comfortable at different temps, that is science. What isn't, but is what is being discussed, is the ease at which people can address that.

Gamespot seems to be having issues with edit today...I meant kindly not kinda.

I do understand the context quite clearly and I am seeking to help you and others gain that understanding as well. The seemingly simple solution of putting on a sweater that you propose is ignoring the actual process of increasing heat. The human body as well as anything else in the universe requires more energy to increase heat than to decrease heat. Thus, when women are at a desk, they are, biologically speaking, going through the process of heating up to handle the heat deficit in temperatures that they are not naturally most comfortable living in during work hours. Contrarily, the average male is not, so one gender is performing a task that another gender is going without doing.

Does this make sense to you?

Not in the context of the discussion, no, and you wouldn't have actually made that silly thermodynamics comment had you did actually understand the point. We are talking about an office environment, whre people have to wear business attire* and only have certain options to either heat up/cool down. It's what's easier/feasible from an action standpoint (ie putting on a sweater), not how difficult it is or how much energy a body has to expend to maintain comfortable body temperatures.

Stupid edit button...

*Just as a funny anecdote I always find it humorous in my office that there are "chilly" women in the office and they do complain about it...meanwhile...almost all of them are wearing tank top (shoulders bare) and stuff like skirts and sun dresses.

Wow, and the refugees thought they had it bad.

@tocool340 said:

*sigh*

LMAO ! Thats my exact reaction, lol ..

Good one ..

Good!

You are saying that transferring heat from the inside of a room to within a human body by putting on a sweater is easier than the human body raising its temperature with a higher room temperature. Got it.

This does not make sense. If you have higher room temperature then there would be more heat to transfer to a system (the human body in this case) then there would be even with an insulator (a sweater). In fact, an insulator would be irrelevant in that context. Women could wear sweaters, but it is clear that you are answering the question of whether or not that is necessary when men are without that requirement, practically speaking. This is a pragmatic approach with a favoring of natural male comfort as the best preference when it is best solved with a scientific one. At worst, we could take the mean comfort levels of each gender in a workspace and take the average of that.

Humans being Humans folks. Nothing to see here, move along.

LOL...no, that's not what I am saying at all. The fact you are approaching it this way is ridiculous and frankly such an over complication of a simple situation it's ridiculous.

Here's the reality, at temperatures where men are comfortable women tend to be cold. At temperatures where women are comfortable men tend to be hot. So you have two choices, one, keep things the same and women who are cold can dress warmer (ie, put on a sweater), or two, you can raise the temperature and now men who are hot have to dress with less clothes. In business environments, which do you think is actually more feasible and a simpler solution to this problem?

On a side note I actually showed my wife this video last night...first thing she said was "what a silly lady, put on warmer clothes if you're cold!"

You are saying that transferring heat from the inside of a room to within a human body by putting on a sweater is easier than the human body raising its temperature with a higher room temperature. Got it.

You know, I actually didn't really read this in full...I initially thought this was just an over-complication of my point...in actuality it's a complete and utter misunderstanding of my point. I can't even begin to imagine how you could come to that conclusion.

@Renevent42:

Here is plausible reasoning quoted from the New York Times.

“In a lot of buildings, you see energy consumption is a lot higher because the standard is calibrated for men’s body heat production,” said Boris Kingma, a co-author of the study and a biophysicist at Maastricht University Medical Center in the Netherlands. “If you have a more accurate view of the thermal demand of the people inside, then you can design the building so that you are wasting a lot less energy, and that means the carbon dioxide emission is less.”

The study says most building thermostats follow a “thermal comfort model that was developed in the 1960s,” which considers factors like air temperature, air speed, vapor pressure and clothing insulation, using a version of Fanger’s thermal comfort equation.

PMV = [0.303e^-0.036M + 0.028]{(M – W) – 3.96E^-8ƒ_cl[(t_cl + 273)⁴ – (t_r + 273)⁴] – ƒ_clh_c(t_cl – t_a) – 3.05[5.73 – 0.007(M – W) – p_a] – 0.42[(M – W) – 58.15] – 0.0173M(5.87 – p_a) – 0.0014M(34 – t_a)}

It is converted to a seven-point scale and compared against the Predicted Percentage Dissatisfied, a gauge of how many people are likely to feel uncomfortably cool or warm.

Seems simple enough.

But Dr. Kingma and his colleague, Wouter van Marken Lichtenbelt, write that one variable in the formula, resting metabolic rate (how fast we generate heat), is based on a 40-year-old man weighing about 154 pounds.

The air conditioning is setup for a male who is not even the average male weight in the UK, today. The known average weight of a male in the UK, today, is 83.6 kg (approximately 184 lbs). I do not know what metric you are utilizing for your conclusions, but there is more that the New York Times has reported.

LINK

Researchers found the women’s average metabolic rate was 20 to 32 percent lower than rates in the standard chart used to set building temperature. So they propose adjusting the model to include actual metabolic rates of women and men, plus factors like body tissue insulation, not just clothing. For example, people who weigh more get warmer faster, and older people have slower metabolic rates, the study reported.

How much warmer an office would become would vary, of course, but the study cites research finding as much as a five-degree difference in women and men’s preferences. Dr. Kingma said a woman might prefer a 75-degree room, while a man might prefer about 70 degrees, which Dr. Kingma said is a common current office temperature.

Some experts doubt the proposed formula would be easily adopted.

This is a discussion about a crossroad when it is a straight path, metaphorically speaking.

http://www.nytimes.com/2015/08/04/science/chilly-at-work-a-decades-old-formula-may-be-to-blame.html?_r=0

Every office I've ever worked in has NEVER gotten the climate control down to a science. It's either too cold or too warm. And depending on where you sit, it could be either hot or cold.

It's the facts of life. Deal with it.