Sexist aircon makes women dumber than men

Women apparently have a new foe that makes them less clever than male colleagues.

Women have a new enemy in the battle for workplace equality.

In the struggle for workplace equality, women have an unanticipated foe: “sexist” office air conditioning that makes them less clever.

Men perform best at cognitive tasks in cooler conditions, research reveals, but women show increased mental dexterity in warmer environments.

There is ample evidence that office environments are tuned to male biology. Air conditioning is often set according to a 1960s formula based on the metabolism of a 40-year-old man who weighs 11st. Previous studies had suggested that the average woman was most comfortable at about 25C, 3C higher than for men.

The new research is thought to be the first to focus on how thermostat settings affect cognitive performance. The results, published in the online journal Plos One, suggest that cooler offices boost the abilities of male staff to the detriment of female colleagues.

“Our findings suggest that gender-mixed workplaces may be able to increase productivity by setting the thermostat higher,” the researchers wrote.

More than 540 people took logic, mathematics and verbal tests in a room that was cooled or heated to one of a range of temperatures between 16.2C and 32.6C. The participants were offered cash rewards based on how many questions they answered correctly.

The women did better on maths and verbal tests in warmer conditions, with more correct answers as well as more answers overall. A 1C increase was associated with nearly a 2 per cent rise in maths questions correctly answered. Conversely, as the heat increased, men tended to submit fewer answers as well as fewer correct ones.

The improved results of women in higher temperatures was larger than the decrease in male performance — an argument, perhaps, for warmer offices. The heat did not appear to affect results on the logic test for either gender.

About 40 per cent of office space in Britain is expected to be air conditioned by next year, compared with 10 per cent in 1994. Separate research has suggested that air-conditioned workplaces have become cooler in recent years. Scientists said that this gender bias should stop, calling for offices to be “thermally egalitarian”.

The subjects in the study were mostly German students and the results could vary for other demographics, the researchers said.

Some bosses have been renowned for keeping their offices cool. Jeff Immelt, the former General Electric chairman, was said to keep his boardroom so cold that his staff wore fleeces. Margaret Thatcher is said to have fought the Cold War from a chilly office. “One should always be a little bit hungry and a little bit cold,” she said, according to Matthew Parris, the Times columnist and former MP.

The Times