Why Are Modern Women Unhappy?

The Times of London has a provocative piece entitled “Women less happy after 40 years of feminism.” It documents a somewhat surprising trend: before feminism, women consistently polled as happier than their husbands. But no longer:

In The Paradox of Declining Female Happiness, Betsey Stevenson and Justin Wolfers of the University of Pennsylvania, begin by noting the gains.

“By many measures the progress of women over recent decades has been extraordinary: the gender wage gap has partly closed; educational attainment has risen and is now surpassing that of men; women have gained an unprecedented level of control over fertility; (and) technological change in the form of new domestic appliances has freed women from domestic drudgery,” they wrote.

It’s telling that Stevenson and Wolfers have to pay homage to the feminist dogmas, that it’s “extraordinary” “progress”that women have things like “an unprecedented level of control over fertility.”  These dogmas have been quietly shattered.  Read Professor Richard Stith’s article, Her Choice, Her Problem for a taste of what I mean.  The direct consequences of this “unprecedented level of control over fertility” have included higher rates of out-of-wedlock pregnancy and single motherhood, and crumbling support for single moms.  Precisely because women are now seen as in “control” over their “fertility,” a woman who refuses to abort an unplanned pregnancy is considered to have “chosen” to continue to be pregnant.  As the title says, her choice, her problem.

After they’re done paying homage to the dogmas, however,  Stevenson and Wolfers have something quite interesting to say:

Yet Stevenson and Wolfers have found that in America women’s happiness, far from rising, has fallen “both absolutely and relatively to that of men”. Where women in the 1970s reported themselves to be significantly happier than men, now for the first time they are reporting levels of happiness lower than men.

In Europe, people’s sense of happiness has risen slightly, but less so for women than men. In 12 European countries, including Britain, the happiness of women has fallen relative to that of men.

The authors readily admit that measuring happiness is necessarily a subjective task, but the overall trend from the data, compiled from social surveys conducted over many years, is clear and compelling.

The work builds on earlier research by Andrew Oswald, professor of economics at Warwick University, who has a particular interest in the study of happiness. He said: “What Betsey and Justin have done, which is a valuable addition, is to show that the trend is found rather widely. For most of the post-war era, happiness surveys showed women noticeably happier than men. That difference has now eroded to zero.”

The big question is: why?

Now, there’s an obvious answer to this question.  But first, let’s dispel the usual suspects.

One common response is that women are unhappy now because they’re now stuck working and doing all the housework. Turns out, this isn’t really true:

When measures of women’s happiness started to dip, some sociologists reached for a simple solution known as the “second shift”. Women’s opportunities in paid employment had increased, but their domestic load had not correspondingly reduced. The belief was that they were going out to work then doing a “second shift” at home — no wonder they weren’t ecstatic.

Sorry, that won’t wash, say Stevenson and Wolfers. Surveys of how individuals spend their time show that for both men and women total work hours (combining paid or domestic) have declined since 1965.

Yes, women’s hours of “market work” have increased, but that has been offset by “large declines in their non-market work”. At the same time “men are now working fewer hours in the market and more hours in home production”.

On a purely statistical basis, women can’t argue their burden has got worse or is now drastically unequal.

Well, if not that, perhaps it’s those unequal incomes we hear so much about? Nope, turns out that’s not true, either:

Studies do show that money is an important factor in happiness: the well-off are happier than the very poor. However, that effect tails off once basic needs are met.

The article then goes on to describe a related phenomenon. A whopping 79% of women polled admitted to shopping to cheer themselves up, while the study also showed that this isn’t a really effective technique at all. The authors then raise, and dismiss, a third argument:

There is, of course, the possibility that women are simply being more direct about their happiness than they used to be. As the authors note: “Women may now feel more comfortable being honest about their true happiness and have thus deflated their previously inflated responses.”

However, the international scale of the trend seems to militate against this.

1. For men and women to be equal, they had to be interchangable.
2. Worth is measured by paychecks.

The first assumption is silly, and actually quite dangerous. If taken seriously, we would have to determine that the disabled are by definition “less equal,”  since they’re impaired in some regard (hence the obnoxious euphemisms like “differently-abled”).  Likewise, the youngest and oldest members of our society would have to be considered “less equal,” since they’re also more vulnerable.  As should be clear, this is little more than “might makes right” as a philosophy, because it assumes that the powerful are worth more than the vulnerable.

It’s also a good way of destroying women.  Let’s take the unoriginal example of cats and dogs.  They are, by nature, different animals.  While there are certain circumstances in which one animal is more practical, but at root, they’re equal.  People have quite rational reasons for preferring one over the other, but the two species simply fill different niches as pets.  Obviously, there are some cats which exhibit dog-like behavior, and vice versa, but measuring a cat’s worth by how well it can do a dog’s job is a good way of demeaning the value of cats.

If a modern woman’s worth is to be measured in push-ups, sit-ups, and two-mile runs, women will come up short.  The fastest men are simply much faster than the fastest women, the strongest men are much stronger than the strongest women, and so on.  This has actually caused some legal controversy, as men have started entering and winning women’s half-marathons (while event organizers were powerless to stop them, for fear of a sex discrimination lawsuit).

My point is that second-wave feminism wanted men and women to be interchangable, but envisioned that as (essentially) interchangable men.  Feminism wasn’t about defining a man’s worth by how good of a homemaker he was.  But it comes close, at points, to defining a woman’s worth by her degrees, her salary, and the like.

In saying this, I’m not suggesting that women can’t be excellent professionals – I’ve known and worked with far too many high-powered women to believe that for a moment.  But the unspoken belief that a professional is worth more than a housewife is the very sort of degrading assumption that feminism should have been fighting, instead of entrenching. Likewise, there are great stay-at-home dads and “househusbands.” But if men were fed the idea, from a young age, that they’d only be “successful” if they were homemakers (or if they were both professionals and homemakers), I think men would find themselves far more stressed and unhappy.

That brings me to my general point, which has very little to do with feminism or gender.  The notion mentioned by Stevenson and Wolfers, that money and sex and “reproductive freedom” and technology should somehow be making us happy is just shallow.  It’s the same boring consumerism that Americans are beginning to bristle under.  We’re the kings and queens of over-consumption.  We indulge our eyes, stuff our faces, and follow our hormones, but we don’t end up happy or satisfied. We end up slaves to our bodies, to our passions.

The things we look to for happiness – the rampant lust, gluttony, drunkenness, greed, and the like – are nothing new.  But as a supposedly-religious country, maybe we should listen to St. Paul’s prescription i Colossians 3:8-17,

But now you must rid yourselves of all such things as these: anger, rage, malice, slander, and filthy language from your lips. Do not lie to each other, since you have taken off your old self with its practices and have put on the new self, which is being renewed in knowledge in the image of its Creator. Here there is no Greek or Jew, circumcised or uncircumcised, barbarian, Scythian, slave or free, but Christ is all, and is in all.

Therefore, as God’s chosen people, holy and dearly loved, clothe yourselves with compassion, kindness, humility, gentleness and patience. Bear with each other and forgive whatever grievances you may have against one another. Forgive as the Lord forgave you. And over all these virtues put on love, which binds them all together in perfect unity.

Let the peace of Christ rule in your hearts, since as members of one body you were called to peace. And be thankful. Let the word of Christ dwell in you richly as you teach and admonish one another with all wisdom, and as you sing psalms, hymns and spiritual songs with gratitude in your hearts to God. And whatever you do, whether in word or deed, do it all in the name of the Lord Jesus, giving thanks to God the Father through him.

If we honestly resolved to life like St. Paul says, rather than listening to the world (which has so miserably failed to satisfy us), we’d find ourselves happier, more joyful, more thankful, and more satisfied than anything the world has to offer.

So in short, I think that the reason modern women are unhappy is that they’ve been promised all sorts of false routes to happiness, and have found them lacking.  The unhappiness is a void which can rightly be filled only by God.  St. Edith Stein, pray for us!