If you're a woman who is often cold at work, science now officially has your back. In a study published Monday in the journal Nature Climate Change, the two male authors suggest most office thermostat temperatures are set in a gender-biased fashion.
In what The New York Times calls "the Great Arctic Office Conspiracy," most office thermostats use a formula developed in the 1960s — a time when women didn't make up half the workforce — to regulate the temperature. The only problem is that the formula caters to the metabolic rate of a 40-year-old, 154-lb. man. Most women are smaller then men and have more body fat, which lends itself to a slower metabolic rate. The slower a body's metabolic rate, the harder it is to produce heat. What's also not factored into the standard formula is that women sometimes work in skirts and sandals, which widens the gap.
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