A study "proving" that women are unhappier now than in the good old days is bunk!
In a country that gorges on “happy meals” and concludes correspondence with a “smiley face,” it is safe to suggest that happiness has been devalued as a meaningful state of mind. Asking about it is like asking “How are you?” Fine. Nevertheless Marcus Buckingham, who describes himself as “leading expert in personal strengths and best-selling author,” decided to assemble all known happiness surveys ("On a scale of 1 to 3, how happy are you?") and report on the Huffington Post that his evidence proved that women have been getting less and less happy over the last 40 years--while men were getting happier and happier.
Arianna Huffington introduced his findings in a post headlined “The Sad, Shocking Truth About How Women Are Feeling.” “It doesn’t matter what their marital status is, how much money they make, whether or not they have children, their ethnic background, or the country they live in,” she wrote. “Women around the world are in a funk.”
Maureen Dowd (in a column entitled “Blue Is The New Black”), picked up on the interpretation and concluded, “The more women have achieved, the more they seem aggrieved.” Then she posed a question: “Did the feminist revolution end up benefiting men more than women?”
Indeed, the time span Buckingham is analyzing coincides with the emergence of the women’s movement. And he too wonders whether feminism has backfired on women. After all the gains women have made, he queries, why aren’t we happy? It must be, he suggests, that independence and accomplishment don’t buy happiness. All they buy us is more stress. “Choice is inherently stressful,” he observes. “And women are being driven to distraction.”
This argument fits right in with the anti-feminist conviction that women have become less feminine over those years and less lovable, less loved, and less honored for what they do. In this universe, happiness is the mother/housewife/secretary of the Mad Men series. Back then, women were so happy that they smiled all the time and if they didn’t, men demanded to know why. (“Why aren’t you smiling, honey?” was a familiar taunt back when we were engaged in the serious business of protesting the limitations on women’s lives.)
