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Ugh, now even air conditioners are sexist

The default setting of most office thermostats is tailored for the metabolic rate of a 40-year-old man.
Summer office attire. Photo, Bruce Weber/Trunk Archive.

New research reveals the real reason why you have to swaddle yourself in seven blankets to maintain a livable core body temperature at work: the patriarchy! (Stop me if you've heard this one before.)

According to a new study published Monday in the journal Nature Climate Change, the majority of office buildings base their default thermostat temperature on the metabolic needs of a 40-year-old, 150-lb man — a standard agreed upon by manufacturers during the golden age of workplace misogyny, the 1960s. Women are typically smaller and have less body fat than men, which explains why our tears freeze when we beg the office janitor to crank the heat in mid-August.

Rather diplomatically, the study's authors concluded that minimizing "gender-discriminating bias in temperature formula" would result in more equitable working conditions and conserve energy, thereby kinda solving global warming.

Women: so thermally demanding.

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