Office climate change
“I’m cold!” Teenager puts down Xbox controller, gets up and walks towards the home thermostat. “Touch that dial and you can kiss that modem and your dreams of making money playing Fortnite goodbye!” barks the father who never imagined he would one day sound like his own father. “Put on a sweater and stop complaining unless you want to pay the gas bill!”
Teenager grumbles, puts on a hoodie and dreams of the day when there is there is no Nazi in the house obsessed with indoor temperature and leaving lights on.
The same men used to go to the office in the Mad Men era, dressed in a jacket, a vest, a shirt and tie, along with long pants. In the modern era, the vest and tie are mostly out but there’s still a long-sleeved shirt and a jacket. If they are wearing jeans with that, it’s Mike Morris formal.
Women, meanwhile, have worn less clothes than men – then and now – particularly in the workplace. In the office, women are more likely to bare their arms and frequently bare their legs, an absolute no-no
to this day for men.
In that previous era, women had to grin and bear it when men wearing three layers of clothes and who were almost always the boss would turn down the thermostat or crank up the air conditioner. For shivering women, the only recourse was a light open jacket, something nowhere near as practical as a Mr. Rogers sweater.
Flash forward to 2019, with more women in offices and more women in managerial roles and suddenly the workplace temperature, once as exclusive the domain of men as the boardroom, is now in play.
Last week’s release by B.C. Hydro of a study showing the heated battle happening between the sexes over office temperature settings, regardless of the season, comes as no surprise, at least to women. Men are still surprised to learn that so much of the world has been designed for their convenience, not just office temperature but the design of desks and office chairs, as well as further out in the world at large.
Caroline Criado Perez explores all of those areas in detail in her book Invisible Women: Data Bias In A World Designed For Men. Even snow removal on streets and sidewalks falls under Perez’s gaze. If city manager Kathleen Soltis thought bringing retired roads director Frank Blues back on retainer earlier this year to get Prince George’s snow removal back on track after the fiasco of the last week of December and first week of January last winter would fix all the problems, she might want to read the very first chapter of Perez’s book.
Snow removal, as Perez explains with the data to support her case, is decided by men and conducted by men heavy equipment operators with men as the standard for the “normal” commuter, ignoring how women as a group are far different local transportation users than men. Women use public transit more often than men, they use sidewalks far more than men and they are far more likely than men to make multiple stops during their daily commute – both on their way to work and their way home – for child care, elder care, picking up groceries and ferrying children to and from school and appointments.
Are those additional uses of public roadways by women factored when men sit around and put together a snow removal plan? Perez’s answer is an emphatic no.
As for office temperature, not only do women wear less clothes and thinner fabrics than men, Perez points out that women literally have thinner skin than men. She makes the same point the B.C. Hydro report does - to this day, office ventilation systems are designed as they were in the 1960s Mad Men era, suited to the metabolism, fashion and preferences of men.
“The modern workplace does not work for women,” she writes.
“From its location, to its hours, to its regulatory standards, it has been designed around the lives of men and it is no longer fit for its purpose.”
Turns out changing the climate in offices isn’t just about getting men to stop with the locker room talk, the sexist jokes and the unwanted attention. It’s also about getting the physical temperature right, too.
The unhappy teenager at home doesn’t have much recourse against grumpy dad but women are equal partners in the modern economy. Creating accommodating workplaces for everyone is not only the right thing to do, it’s simply good business.