Global warming is now the greatest threat to human prosperity and survival. Hot weather and heat extremes severely limit people’s work and exercise capacity, with consequent detrimental effects on individuals’ health, comfort, and productivity [1]. Undoubtedly, adjusting our thermoregulatory behaviour represents the most effective mechanism to maintain thermal homeostasis and ensure heat stress resilience [2]. Remarkably, our thermal behaviour is entirely dependent on the ability to detect variations in our internal (i.e., body) and external environment, via sensing changes in skin temperature and wetness.

In the past 30 years, we have seen a significant expansion of our understanding of the molecular, neuroanatomical, and neurophysiological mechanisms that allow humans to sense temperature and wetness [3]. However, we still lack a comprehensive understanding of how autonomic, perceptual, and behavioural responses to heat vary at an individual level, for example as a function of sex, age, and hormonal status.

Women are a group of individuals that undergo unique morphological, physiological, and hormonal changes across the lifespan. For example, consider the impact of the menstrual cycle, pregnancy, and menopause, all of which are accompanied by both short- and long-term effects on female body temperature regulation, heat tolerance, thermal sensitivity, and comfort. Surprisingly, women have been largely unrepresented in heat stress research. Indeed, a recent review highlighted that only 12-18% of participants in thermoregulation research were female over the last decade [4].

Empirical evidence indicates that innate differences in skin thermal and wetness sensitivity may exist between men and women, and this could underlie divergent behavioural responses to heat stress between these groups [5]. However, knowledge on how thermal and wetness sensitivity may vary across women’s life cycle, and the implications that this may have for female thermal behaviours under heat stress, continue to be lacking. This knowledge gap provides a significant barrier to develop interventions (e.g. personalised cooling) and solutions (e.g. body-mapped sport garments) that meet the thermal needs of females across different life stages and facilitate the maintenance of an active lifestyle.

This symposium talk will review both established and novel evidence on the peripheral and central neurophysiological mechanisms underpinning skin thermal and wetness sensitivity in women, as well as their role in driving female thermal behaviours. It is hoped that this overview will stimulate the development of testable hypotheses to increase our understanding of the behavioural thermal physiology of women across the life span and at a time of climate change.