4 ms·
> This leads to the odd sight of female office workers wrapped in blankets in the summer, while their male colleagues wander around in shorts. Won't you have a
by umvi 8y ago
> This leads to the odd sight of female office workers wrapped in blankets in the summer, while their male colleagues wander around in shorts.
Won't you have a problem either way, then? Unless you can climate control individual offices based on biological sex of the occupant, you'll either have shivering women or sweaty men.
- mgamache 8y agoI suppose you could split the difference.
- mgamache 8y agoThat comment was not meant to be snarky (not sure why the DV)... I thought it was a common sense, if obvious, solution to the objection raised. Any time you optimize for one variable you usually do it at the expense of others.
- mises 8y agoIt is socially acceptable to be cold and to wear warmer clothing to compensate, especially for women. It is not socially acceptable to be sweaty and smelly, and it is not acceptable for men to wear shorts (and often not even short shirts) in a business or formal setting. The consequence of this is that it's better to err to the cooler side.
- mgamache 8y agoThat makes sense, but I can't help but note that the "sweaty and smelly" that would be less socially acceptable are (to me) more masculine traits. Could you argue that the business world (and academia) is already feminized? Compare the behavior you might see on a sports team (yelling and anger) vs what is acceptable in an office environment. I am not sure, but your comment makes me wonder.
- mises 8y agoI'd say in business/academia, men are to smell neutral, whereas women are more expected to smell perfumed. I don't know that I'd call that "feminized", I'd call it polite. Sports teams are more accepting of yelling, smelliness, etc. because a field is not an enclosed space. An office is an enclosed space where work is to happen, so bad smells and loud noises are bad form. At least, that's how I figure it.
- scarmig 8y agoOne solution would be for the temperature to be mid way between men and women. But, if I have a choice of jobs, I'm not going to work at a place that keeps the heat blasting so that the coldest person in the building feels warm. And of course the same could be said of someone who's freezing in a building meant to keep the warmest person from overheating. I guess the ideal solution would be some kind of advanced technology you could wear to insulate yourself from the cold of the environment, while also letting you take it off when it gets too warm. Startup idea?
- smegger001 8y agolike a sweater you mean?
- b_tterc_p 8y agoI don’t think this anecdote makes sense either. I have heard it described this way when it was assumed men would wear jackets but not in casual shorts. I also find it hard to believe that offices are five degrees too cold for women. That feels too extreme.
- sdwa 8y agoWell, you could have it somewhere in between the two extremes.
- SerLava 8y agoThe lack of empathy around this issue is baffling. If you don't want women to be cold, kill the stupid dress code for men. Otherwise, women just have to wear borderline cold-weather clothing at the office because the men are already wearing the absolute minimum they can wear without being fired. I don't understand how people keep writing about this issue where there are 2 or more people who collectively require 2 temperatures and the answer is to just... switch it. Pretty much every office on Earth has come to the same obvious conclusion about how to set the thermostat. It turns out that people wearing coats is better than people drenched in sweat all day turning the place into a reeking locker room halfway through the day.
- mises 8y agoYes. Someone will have to be uncomfortable, and it's better to have people in warmer clothing than smelly. Also, women tend to weather skimpier clothing (short dresses, bare arms, lower-cut lines all around). It's not fair to sweat people out (and, quite frankly, not pleasant for the noses of the cold people) just because many women don't wear full clothing.