Is the aircon sexist?

It was at Lord Robert’s Hotel in Sydney that I discovered this crucial piece of information. I was standing at the top bar ordering a round of drinks when a woman came up and asked another bartender to turn down the airconditioning please. It was too cold. My friend had accompanied me to help carry the drinks back agreed that the woman had acted in such an entitled way. The pub was quite full - this being a Saturday afternoon - and this woman decided that temperature should be calibrated for her own personal comfort.

The room was not particularly cold for me - I was wearing jeans and a t-shirt, although I had been living in colder Melbourne so my blood had thickened as the Hungarians say. Yet it struck me that there was no ideal temperature for everyone.

The conversation continued until we got outside and I placed the drinks in front of friends, including the girlfriend of the friend I was having a conversation with. She asked what we discussing and when I told her she answered that air-conditioning was, in fact, sexist. She continued that since its invention it had been set for men with suits in offices. Women had been destined from that point onward to freeze in their summer dresses. Air conditioning it seemed was yet another tool in the hand of the patriarchy to keep women on ice.

It is a strange comment to make and one that burrowed itself into my subconscious to continue gnawing away later. Even in the most benign office the thermostat is a point of contention. In my previous co-working space the temperature was dominated by two women who were set on recreating the conditions of Ibiza in the middle of a Melbourne winter. They were theatre promoters and brash and loud and the lady I worked next too was “too scared” to bring it up, yet covertly lowered the temperature. It was after all an environmental issue - why burn coal when you can just put on a jacket?

It is worth considering the comment that airconditioning was sexist. It can be quickly reduced a discussion on the difference of gendered clothing in a professional context. First question is first: why did men wear suits?

The origin of the modern men’s dress suit came out of twentieth century Britain. The industrial revolution had changed the face of business and men needed something more practical than frilled frocks to wear amongst the grease and machines. At this moment women were excluded from business and so there was no corresponding female dress. Right out the gate the discussion of clothing is one defined by gender inequality.

This exclusion continued until world war 2 when the radical rampup of industry required everyone, yes even women, to man the machines and churn out tanks for the war effort. A modern mechanised industry required administration in an office and while men everywhere (except the USSR) were still loathed to let women make any meaningful decisions, they needed things recorded - so the needed typists. So enter the woman in the office.

At the end of the war women had had a taste of economic independence and were less keen to have their professional responsibilities reduced to changing nappies and cooking dinners for their man. This was a golden age of post-war reconstruction, the production line and the invention of the modern office. Actually the office was developed very much on the model of the factory floor minus the sparks and sheet metal. In an office men were expected to arrive in suits while women in dresses.

Around this time came the broad adoption of airconditioners from their invention in 1902. Controlled and stable conditions in an office seemed a logical extension of the modernist dream - predictability meant reliable output. An airconditioned office was a focused office.

All these three aspects were set to collide in this new world of the postwar office. Naturally at that moment most bosses were still men and so they had the last say as to whether that damn thermostate is too low, Janice. This meant temperature was set for men not women.

Now enter the sixties - the sexual revolution, the counterculture and a wholesale rejection of the oppressive office atmosphere. First wave feminism (as every subsequent wave) paid particular attention to repressive dress for women. As the oppressors men had no moment of formal rejection, nothing to rebel against.

That men were expected to wear suits whilst in the office lasted another 2 decades until the dot com boom allowed a bunch of incredibly rich tech boymen to upset male norms in the office. Up until this point the social requirement for men to wear a suit in the office was based on the relationship between manager and worker - that is, was based on the economic necessity that a man wear a suit if he were to succeed. Expectations for women were sexualised and based on a strange play of modesty and promiscuity. This meant the office was an oppressive sphere, yet one that was far more based on the verticality of the org chart than gender norms.

Of course today men wear suits in only a few professions. Yet the range of clothing available to women in a formal context is wider than for men. A women could wear a pants suit to work and it seen as a symbol of strength. But a man who would wear a dress in the office and still expect to succeed would be doomed to failure. Even in 2020.

So all this returns to the original question: Is air conditioning sexist? It certainly has roots in office politics which contained the sexual inequality of the historical moment. Yet as it was calibrated towards temperatures ideal for men represented the fact men were expected to wear an antiquated and fusty form of clothing. Far more at play is the economic oppression of the office that demands a certain level of rigid formality if professional success were possible.

They say if all you have a hammer everything looks like a nail. This is how my friends girlfriend’s comment appears to me. It is easy to turn up myopically and shoehorn any injustice and inequality into the gender dichotomy if you have enough mental dexterity. Yet it seems intellectually dishonest. It also undermines the feminist movement because it demands that everything is interpreted through its lens which reduces arguments ad absurdum. Taken to its logical conclusion you arrive in a place where a white good is yet another symbol of oppression.