爲什麼寫字樓裏的空調歧視女性

Summers are hot in Omaha, where heat indexes can top 100 degrees. But Molly Mahannah is prepared.

奧馬哈市的夏天非常熱，其酷熱指數最高可以達到華氏100度（約合攝氏37.8度）。但莫莉·馬哈納(Molly Mahannah)對此有所準備。

At the office, she bundles up in cardigans or an oversized sweatshirt from her file drawer. Then, she says, “I have a huge blanket at my desk that I’ve got myself wrapped in like a burrito.” Recently, “I was so cold, I was like ‘I’m just going to sit in my car in like 100-degree heat for like five minutes, and bake.’”

在辦公室裏，她會從文件抽屜裏拿出羊毛開衫或者大號運動衫，穿在身上。然後說，“我的辦公桌旁還常備着一個大毯子，可以把自己像做玉米捲餅一樣裹起來。”最近，“我覺得特別冷，就會想，要到自己的車裏坐上五分鐘，那裏有華氏100度，可以暖和暖和。”

Ms. Mahannah, 24, who wrote on Twitter that at work she felt like an icy White Walker from “Game of Thrones,” said a female co-worker at her digital marketing agency cloaked herself in sweaters, too. But the men? “They’re in, like, shorts.”

24歲的馬哈納在Twitter上說，在辦公室裏，她覺得自己像是《權力的遊戲》(Game of Thrones)裏冰冷的“白鬼”(White Walker)。還說在她所在的數字營銷機構裏，一名女性同事也穿上了毛衣。但男人們呢？“他們穿着，短褲之類的。”

Right. It happens every summer: Offices turn on the air-conditioning, and women freeze into Popsicles.

沒錯。每年夏天都是如此：辦公室裏開着空調，女人們凍成了冰棒。

Finally, scientists (two men, for the record) are urging an end to the Great Arctic Office Conspiracy. Their study, published Monday in the journal Nature Climate Change, says that most office buildings set temperatures based on a decades-old formula that uses the metabolic rates of men. The study concludes that buildings should “reduce gender-discriminating bias in thermal comfort” because setting temperatures at slightly warmer levels can help combat global warming.

終於，科學家們（特別聲明，是兩位男士）開始呼籲終結“辦公室北極大陰謀”(Great Arctic Office Conspiracy)。他們週一在《自然·氣候變化》(Nature Climate Change)雜誌發表的一項研究顯示，大多數寫字樓的溫度設置，都是基於一種幾十年不曾改變的公式，這一公式是依據男性的代謝率設定的。這項研究的結論是，寫字樓應該“減少熱舒適度方面的性別歧視”，因爲將室溫水平略微提高，有助於應對全球變暖問題。

“In a lot of buildings, you see energy consumption is a lot higher because the standard is calibrated for men’s body heat production,” said Boris Kingma, a co-author of the study and a biophysicist at Maastricht University Medical Center in the Netherlands. “If you have a more accurate view of the thermal demand of the people inside, then you can design the building so that you are wasting a lot less energy, and that means the carbon dioxide emission is less.”

“在很多寫字樓裏，都可以看到能源消耗要高很多，因爲溫度標準是依據男性的身體代謝產熱能力設定的，”這項研究成果的合著者之一、荷蘭馬斯特裏赫特大學醫學中心(Maastricht University Medical Center)生物物理學家鮑里斯·金瑪(Boris Kingma)說道。“如果你對辦公室裏人們的保暖需求有更準確的瞭解，就能設計出能源浪費少得多的寫字樓，那也意味着可以降低二氧化碳排放。”

The study says most building thermostats follow a “thermal comfort model that was developed in the 1960s,” which considers factors like air temperature, air speed, vapor pressure and clothing insulation, using a version of Fanger’s thermal comfort equation.

這項研究顯示，大多數寫字樓的溫度自動調節器都沿用了“1960年代形成的熱舒適度模型”，它考慮了氣溫、空氣速率、蒸氣壓、衣服隔熱等因素，使用了範格(Fanger)熱舒適公式的一種版本。

It is converted to a seven-point scale and compared against the Predicted Percentage Dissatisfied, a gauge of how many people are likely to feel uncomfortably cool or warm.

它被轉換成一種七分制，與預期不滿意比例(Predicted Percentage Dissatisfied)相對應，後者用以判斷有多少人可能會感覺冷得不舒服或熱得不舒服。

Seems simple enough.

看起來似乎很簡單。

But Dr. Kingma and his colleague, Wouter van Marken Lichtenbelt, write that one variable in the formula, resting metabolic rate (how fast we generate heat), is based on a 40-year-old man weighing about 154 pounds.

但金瑪博士和他的同事沃特·凡·馬爾肯·裏徹滕貝爾(Wouter van Marken Lichtenbelt)寫道，這個公式中有一個變量——靜息代謝率——是基於體重約154磅（約合70公斤）的40歲男性的參數設定的。

Maybe that man once represented most people in offices. But women now constitute half of the work force and usually have slower metabolic rates than men, mostly because they are smaller and have more body fat, which has lower metabolic rates than muscle. Indeed, the study says, the current model “may overestimate resting heat production of women by up to 35 percent.”

也許這樣一位男士的指數曾經代表了辦公室大多數人的情況。但如今女性佔據勞動力大軍的一半，她們的代謝率往往低於男性，主要因爲她們大多比男性體型小，身體脂肪含量多，而脂肪比肌肉代謝率低。實際上，這項研究顯示，目前的模型“可能把女性在靜息狀態的產熱能力高估了35%。”

“If women have lower need for cooling it actually means you can save energy, because right now we’re just cooling for this male population,” said Joost van Hoof, a building physicist at Fontys University of Applied Sciences in the Netherlands, who was not involved in the study.

“如果女性製冷需求更低，那實際上意味着可以節省能源，因爲目前我們只是在爲男性人羣製冷，”荷蘭方提斯應用科技大學(Fontys University of Applied Sciences)建築物理學家約斯特·凡·胡夫(Joost van Hoof)說道。他沒有參與上述研究。

“Many men think that women are just nagging,” he said. “But it’s because of their physiology.”

“很多男人覺得女人們只是在嘮叨，”他說。“但那是她們的身體機能在起作用。”

Physiology and clothing. The authors also note that the model is not always calibrated accurately for women wearing skirts or sandals.

除了身體機能，還有着裝習慣。研究者還指出，目前的模型並不總能準確地爲穿裙子和涼鞋的女士們調校溫度。

“Many men, they wear suits and ties, and women tend to dress sometimes with cleavage,” said Dr. van Hoof, who wrote a commentary about the study. “The cleavage is closer to the core of the body, so the temperature difference between the air temperature and the body temperature there is higher when it’s cold. I wouldn’t overestimate the effect of cleavage, but it’s there.”

“很多男士穿西裝打領帶，而女士們則穿着展露乳溝的衣服，”凡·胡夫博士說道，他就上述研究撰寫了一則評論。“乳溝更靠近身體核心，所以周圍溫度低的時候，那裏氣溫和體溫的溫差會更大。我不想過度誇大乳溝的影響，但它確實存在。”

So for the planet’s sake, men should “stop complaining,” Dr. Kingma said. “If it is too warm, the behavior thing you can do is take off a piece of clothing, but you can only do that so much. You could also say let’s keep it a very cold building and women should just wear more clothes.”

所以，爲了地球環境考慮，男士們應該“停止抱怨，”金瑪博士說。“如果覺得辦公室太熱，可以脫一件衣服，但你只能做到這種程度。你也可能會說，我們還是繼續把辦公室調得冷一些吧，女人們應該多穿些衣服。”

But his study offers another solution: Change the formula.

但他的研究提供了另一種解決方案：改變調節溫度的公式。

The researchers tested 16 women, students in their 20s, doing seated work wearing light clothes in rooms called respiration chambers, which track oxygen inhaled and carbon dioxide exhaled. Skin temperature was measured on hands, the abdomen and elsewhere. A thermometer pill the women swallowed reported internal body temperature.

研究人員對16名女性進行了測試。她們都是20多歲的學生，穿着輕薄的衣服，坐在可以跟蹤監測吸入的氧氣和呼出的二氧化碳濃度的房間內，這種房間名爲“呼吸室”。她們一邊坐着工作，一邊有儀器監測她們手部、腹部和其他部位的體溫，還有一種口服體溫藥丸用來測量她們體內的溫度。

Researchers found the women’s average metabolic rate was 20 to 32 percent lower than rates in the standard chart used to set building temperature. So they propose adjusting the model to include actual metabolic rates of women and men, plus factors like body tissue insulation, not just clothing. For example, people who weigh more get warmer faster, and older people have slower metabolic rates, the study reported.

研究者發現，女性的平均代謝率比用來設定寫字樓溫度標準的代謝率低20%到32%。所以他們建議對現有溫度標準進行調整，既考慮到女性和男性的實際代謝率，也考慮身體組織絕熱等其他因素，而不僅僅是服裝因素。比如，研究報告提示，體重較重的人更容易感到熱，年齡更大的人代謝率更低。

How much warmer an office would become would vary, of course, but the study cites research finding as much as a five-degree difference in women and men’s preferences. Dr. Kingma said a woman might prefer a 75-degree room, while a man might prefer about 70 degrees, which Dr. Kingma said is a common current office temperature.

當然，辦公室究竟應該提高多少溫度應該視具體情況而變化，但這項研究的結果顯示，女性和男性偏好的溫度會相差五度。金瑪博士表示，女性可能希望室內溫度達到華氏75度，而男性可能傾向於設在70度左右，金瑪教授表示，華氏70度的室溫設定目前在辦公場所比較常見。

Some experts doubt the proposed formula would be easily adopted.

有些專家懷疑新提議的溫度標準能否被很好地採納。

Khee Poh Lam, an architecture professor at Carnegie Mellon, said even if the industry accepted a change to the longstanding model, buildings often house different businesses or “squeeze more people in” than they were designed for and partition offices so thermostats and vents are in different rooms. Given these improvisations, he added, “whether this actually affects energy, I think that’s a big leap.”

卡內基梅隆大學(Carnegie Mellon)建築學教授林棋波(Khee Poh Lam)表示，即便業界願意改變這個長期存在的模型，每棟寫字樓裏都容納着不同的企業，而且一些樓宇裏“擠的人”比原先設計的要多，此外，辦公室也會分隔空間，導致恆溫器和通風管道被隔在了不同的房間裏。他接着說，考慮到這些具體情況，“這一舉措要真正對能源消耗產生影響，我覺得難度不小。”

Still, he said, “we need to keep pushing” for improvements because “the phenomenon of women getting cold is very, very obvious,” and cold or hot employees are less productive.

不過，他也說，“我們需要持續推動”這些改善措施，因爲“辦公室裏女性感到冷是非常非常普遍的事”，而如果感覺太冷或太熱，員工的工作效率會比較低。

Individualized temperature controls are the eventual answer, said Dr. Lam, who helped design a “personal environmental module” in the 1990s that was deemed too expensive for commercial development. Now others are developing systems to let workers make their cubicles warmer or cooler.

林教授表示，個性化的溫度控制纔是最終的解決之道。1990年代，他曾幫助設計了一種“個人環境模塊”，但人們覺得它成本過高，不適合進行商業開發。現在，已經有其他人在開發可以讓員工把自己工位的溫度調高或調低的系統了。

Kimberly Mark, 31, would appreciate that. This summer, at a software company in Natick, Mass., she and female colleagues are using space heaters. The thermostat is in the office of “the guy next to me,” she said, “and I’m the only woman in the offices that he controls.”

31歲的金伯莉·馬克(Kimberly Mark)非常期待這種設備出現。她是馬薩諸塞州納蒂克一家軟件公司的員工，這個夏天，她和女性同事在使用小型取暖設備保暖。她說，恆溫器在“我旁邊那個傢伙”的辦公室裏，“而我是他控制溫度的這個辦公室裏，唯一的女性。”

Phoebe McPherson, 21, said she sometimes wears thick leggings, a long-sleeve shirt, a sweatshirt and motorcycle boots to work at a health technology startup in Reston, Va. She often adds a tartan blanket, wraps “a blanket around my legs,” and despite the glaring fashion faux pas, wears a Snuggie backward to seal off any openings.

21歲的菲比·麥克弗森(Phoebe McPherson)供職於弗吉尼亞州雷斯頓的一家健康科技創業公司。她說自己有時要穿厚厚的打底褲、長袖襯衫、運動衣和機車靴去上班，她往往還會再加上一條花格呢毯，“用毯子把腿裹起來”，還會朝後穿上一件Snuggie帶袖懶人毯，以免任何地方透風，儘管這儼然犯了時尚大忌。

“I wore a dress once and had to go change,” said Ms. McPherson, who attended college in New Hampshire. While male colleagues wear T-shirts, “I’m bringing all my New Hampshire clothes to work.” And when that and hot coffee fail, she nuzzles against a white fake-fur wall in the office, just to “feel my skin warming up against the fur.”

“我曾經穿着裙子去上班，但最後不得不換衣服，”曾在新罕布什爾州讀大學的麥克弗森說道。男同事們穿着T恤，“我卻把自己在新罕布什爾州時的衣服都穿到單位來了。”如果多穿衣服、喝熱咖啡還不管用，她就會把臉貼到辦公室裏一面貼着人造白色毛皮的牆上，就爲“讓貼着毛皮的皮膚，感覺一點點暖和起來”。