Washington Post columnist Petula Dvorak hit an icy nerve with her recent piece on gender disputes over thermal comfort in office spaces.

"Every single woman I talked to in downtown Washington on a hot, humid July afternoon was thawing out," Dvorak writes. "It's the time of year desperate women rely on cardigans, pashminas and space heaters to make it through the workweek in their frigid offices. And their male colleagues barely notice."

It doesn't have to be that way, though, thanks to advances in smart technology.

Dvorak's observations are borne out by the results of a recent survey conducted by tech research firm Software Advice. The study found that, indeed, as a group men and women have different tolerances for thermal comfort. The median preferred temperature of survey participants was 70 degrees for men and 72 degrees for women — not a big difference. At the margins, however, the variance was substantial.

"Nearly one-fourth of women prefer an indoor temperature of 75 degrees or higher compared to just 5 percent of men," researcher Forrest Burnson states. "It's a fascinating statistic because there are both physiological and cultural explanations for it, and it underlines why it is so difficult to make everyone in the office content when the differences in preference are that extreme."

The study also found that older employees (those ages 45 and up) were more likely to be dissatisfied with the temperature in their workplace than were younger workers.

As has been demonstrated in a number of other studies, discomfort and lack of control in the workplace take their toll on employees. The majority of respondents in Software Advice's survey (60 percent) said that having more control over the surrounding temperature would improve their mood and productivity. Only one-fourth said they had the ability to adjust the thermostat in their workspace themselves, and 40 percent said they had no way to change the temperature.

The quandary for building and facilities managers has been how to accommodate variances in preferences for thermal comfort while controlling energy use. In an article published earlier this year in the journal Building Research and Information, researcher Gail Brager and her colleagues observe the need for a new approach.

"The building industry needs a fundamental paradigm shift in its notion of comfort, to find low-energy ways of creating more thermally dynamic and non-uniform environments that bring inhabitants pleasure," Brager notes. "A significant energy cost is incurred by the current practice of controlling buildings within a narrow range of temperatures."

Their study found buildings are often overcooled in warm months and overheated in cold months, as did the Software Advice survey — thus both wasting energy and reducing employee effectiveness. Dvorak speculates that one solution might be to have separate temperature zones for male and female employees.

A less divisive option, smart technologies may hold the key to resolving this dilemma. While it's not practical or cost-efficient to give each employee control over the HVAC system and have temperatures yo-yoing up and down all day long, it is possible to provide employees with data to help them determine what is an optimal average temperature.

The researchers at Soft Advice mention two smart-device-driven applications, Comfy and Nest, that do just that. These systems provide managers with useful feedback loops as well as increasing employees' sense of control.

In addition, other studies have found that giving employees control over airflow in their workspace can mitigate some of the effects of discomfort from ambient temperature. These technologies are not expensive and can be easily retrofitted into older buildings.

It's time to put an end to thermostat wars and focus attention on more pressing business needs.