With winter setting in, and the mercury progressively creeping ever so lower in

the morning, it gets harder to wake up from the bed and in that fight over waking up, a
question popped into my sleep addled head, the morning temperature is around 24 C
and if I feel lethargic at this temperature, then how come offices worker are expected to
work at optimum levels in a climate controlled at 24 C that is considered to be the
industry norm across corporate offices? Maybe it was just me, a tropical brat who is
from the land of eternal summer who is afflicted by this. So, as any rational person
would do, I started to benchmark with the people around me and also made a few calls
to see if that question is valid, the results lead to a some interesting observations.
Women on average reported that they felt colder than men, wearing full sleeved shirts
or sweatshirts to cope with the temperature or wanting to occupy rooms closer to the
windows where the temperature is slightly higher, this is especially evident in winter
than in summer. Research on this question pointed to me to a few studies which show
women favor higher ambient temperatures than men, and core temperatures are similar
for both, women’s hands are on average are 2.8 C colder as compared to men, seeing
these facts and most of the jobs in corporate involve typing it acts as an impediment to
the better half of the population.
If this were the case why aren’t women rising up in revolt against this thermal
injustice, that was explained by one research where women were observed to have
more thermal satisfaction because of the (personal opinion: environment like kitchen
they are exposed to at home and) the gender role of women being subservient in our
culture leading to adapting rather than revolting against this. The paper also goes onto
say that there exists generational preferences for different temperatures with the
younger generation needing a higher temperature.
So in today’s world where organisations want a greater work participation from
the better gender, they should also focus on making the workplace more thermal
friendly for everyone, by having well ventilated office spaces. More research is needed
in this particular field as there is not many focussed studies on the temperature
discomfort on job performance in the Indian context, to prevent the office spaces from
becoming frozen wastelands for both the employees and the jobs they perform.

References
Indraganti,  M.,  Ooka,  R.,  &  Rijal,  H.  B.  (2015).  Thermal  comfort  in  offices  in 
India:  Behavioral  adaptation  and  the  effect  of  age  and  gender.  Energy  and 
Buildings, 103, 284–295. doi:10.1016/j.enbuild.2015.05.042