A study found no real difference in how men and women feel cold.
02:54, Wed, May 1, 2024 | UPDATED: 02:54, Wed, May 1, 2024
A study has found women are not more cold than men (Image: Getty)
A common complaint is that offices and public spaces with heating and air conditioning are often set up with men in mind - while women are left shivering because they are more susceptible to the cold.
Scientists however now claim that women are now more prone to feeling the chill, instead they say there is "no sex difference" in how we perceive temperature.
Researchers from the National Institutes of Health in Maryland, the United States, exposed 16 women and 12 men to temperatures between 17C and 31C for four hours.
They were asked to report how comfortable they were in the conditions, measuring how much they shivered as temperatures fellow below 22C - standard room temperature.
Scientists say women don't feel the cold more (Image: Getty)
They reported: “No sex difference was detected in shivering or reported thermal comfort.”
The study also measured the temperature when people started shivering and when the body starts to take extra action to keep it warm by boosting the metabolic rate.
It found “no differences were detected in the coldest tolerable temperature … between women and men”.
Published in the journal Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, it found women appeared to actually deal with cold better, finding that their body’s emergency heat-generation mechanism activated at a lower temperature than men.
A study found women are better at dealing with cold. (Image: Getty)
Invalid email
We use your sign-up to provide content in ways you've consented to and to improve our understanding of you. This may include adverts from us and 3rd parties based on our understanding. You can unsubscribe at any time. Read our Privacy Policy
This is because women "generally have a higher body fat percentage than men of similar body mass index, suggesting that women are more thermally insulated."
The researchers added: “Popular belief, theoretical arguments and survey data suggest that women are more likely than men to feel cold in ambient temperatures typical to common areas, such as offices.”
They found, however, that: “Contrary to conventional belief, we did not detect a significant difference in the self-reported thermal comfort of women and men across the span of temperatures we tested.”
The study found susceptibility to cold is in fact linked with other factors such as whether soemone was overweight or out-of-shape.
The participants in the study were all healthy and of a lean body type, prompting the researchers to warn that “these findings should be replicated in larger, more diverse study samples to enhance generalisability”