A study by researcher Natalie P. Skillern et al., published in Sports Engineering found that wetsuit design may not need to account for thermoregulatory differences between males and females.
Skin and core temperatures of 20 male and 13 female recreational surfers were analyzed. Wearing custom-fitted 2-mm wetsuits, participants surfed for 60-min in a controlled simulation that accounted for water temperature, humidity, etc. Core temperatures of males and females did not have a statistically significant difference. However, slight differences in skin temperature were found for specific regions of the body.
Overall, while some thermoregulatory differences between sexes were found, these differences may be too small to prompt a change in wetsuit design. However, further research needs to be conducted to verify these findings, as this study had a small sample size of 33.
Image obtained from Pixabay (Clker Free Vector Images, Greg Montani)