You know, talking to a few station personnel today, we had an interesting, though somewhat seemingly sexist, conversation regarding cars, heating (nope, Willyville, I didn’t check my mail yet) and the question of “Why are women always so cold” — I’m going to just throw the obvious out there first to keep from all the snide comments about us guys being “too fat” — yes, ha ha.. We’re all very fat from sitting around on the radio all the time. Okay, now that that’s out of our system, let’s get back to the point. 

Every car trip, every evening at home, movie theaters, restaurant, petting zoo, church, rock show, bicycle ride, ocean voyage, trip to the moon — every time… “Can we turn the heater up, I’m so cold.” — “roll the windows up” — “my feet are cold” — “we’re too far from the Earth’s sun, I think we went a little off course” – 

I think that God (or Chrysler, maybe) created those new cars with the separate heating controls for this very reason… The next model will have a partition in the middle of the car to create two very separate controlled environments. His and hers… His will be a comfortable 68-74 degrees; hers will be a sleepy 373.1339-Kelvin (or as I like to refer to it as “enough to melt my face”.) 

I looked online for a possible scientific explanation (other than “shut up, fatty”) — here’s what I found on a Web site called “The Straight Dope” written by straight dope Cecil Adams: 

Women have a higher ratio of surface to volume than men and thus shed heat faster. The reasoning here is that heat generation is determined by volume (radius cubed), while heat dissipation is determined by skin surface area (radius squared). The smaller your size, the lower your heat generation/heat dissipation ratio, and the colder you are. Probably part of the answer–see below. 

Men have more heat-generating muscle mass. Muscles are well supplied with blood vessels. The more muscle, the more blood flow and the more warmth. 

Women have a higher vasoconstriction threshold temperature. Vasoconstriction is the process by which, as the external temperature falls, blood flow to the skin is restricted in order to divert blood to internal organs, thus maintaining core temperature. The theory: as ambient temp falls, women shut off blood flow to the skin sooner in order to provide more warmth to their unborn babies, so they feel colder. Interesting idea but as yet unproven–though women do seem to have lower skin temperature when exposed to cold. 

Women get colder during menstruation. Supposedly this is due to anemia, hormonal changes, etc. However, most studies haven’t shown much difference between menstruating and nonmenstruating women in terms of heat response. As you say, female aversion to cold doesn’t seem to be confined to a particular time of the month. 

I’ve also heard it claimed that men feel warmer because they wear three-piece suits and get offices with south-facing windows, whereas women are apparently shivering in rags in the dark. Setting aside the gross generalizations in this picture, when’s the last time you saw anybody except a lawyer wear a three-piece suit? 

The most persuasive research (for example, “Comparison of Thermoregulatory Responses Between Men and Women Immersed in Cold Water,” Tikuisis et al, Journal of Applied Physiology, October 2000) suggests that varying male/female response to temp is largely a result of size and body-fat percentage, not some fundamental biological difference. Men have a higher metabolism only in the sense that a big car uses more gas than a little one. (To be fair, you can find studies that point to a different conclusion–as I say, the experts disagree.) Anyway, you can either work with large (or no) women, be a pig, or deal with it. Personally I like 25 degrees Celsius just fine. 

Do any of these seem plausible or is another one of the universe’s infinite mysterious? I prefer to not find out the true explanation or a resolution because I’ve grown fond of the constant arguing and my unreasonable responses of “Man, put on another coat or something.” 

This entry was posted on Tuesday, January 29th, 2008 at 1:00 pm and is filed under Women. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.