My girlfriend strongly believes this comes from "patriarchal society" and specifically a "study" that said office thermostats are set based on an old formula designed in like the 60s and that only looked at how HVAC interacted with men.

I thought the idea that offices set thermostats to an actual standard instead of just whoever cries the loudest or has the most power to be almost laughable, so I looked for the "study" she got it from. Indeed, I don't remember the details, but the governmental bureaucracy involved in recommending HVAC did actually use a formula that was obsolete and didn't consider women. However, there was zero evidence in the study that anyone actually used that formula in consideration of anything.