Why are women so unhappy today?

It seems to most of us that modern women have it all. In the past four decades, women have secured better job prospects, greater acknowledgement for achievement, wider influence, more free time, and higher salaries. By almost any economic or social indicator, the last 35 years have been great for women. Birth control has given them the ability to control reproduction. They are obtaining far more education and making inroads in many professions that were traditionally male-dominated. The gender wage gap has declined substantially. Women are living longer then ever. Studies even suggest that men are starting to take on more housework and child-raising responsibilities. So why is it that recent studies reveal that women have gradually become less happy than they were 40 years ago, and less happy than men—and unlike men, that they grow sadder as they get older.

A recent study by Stevenson and Wolfers talks about “The Paradox of Declining Female Happiness” and presents evidence that women report being less happy today than they were 35 years ago, especially relative to the corresponding happiness rates for men. This is true of working women and stay-at-home moms, married women and those that are single, the highly educated and the less educated. It is worse for older women; those aged 18-29 don’t seem to be doing too badly. Women with kids have fared worse than women without kids. The only notable exception to the pattern is black women, who are happier today than they were three decades ago.

According to the General Social Survey, which has tracked Americans’ mood since 1972, women are getting gloomier and men are getting happier. Each year since 1972, the United States General Social Survey has asked men and women: "How happy are you, on a scale of 1 to 3, with 3 being very happy, and 1 being not too happy?" This survey includes a representative sample of men and women of all ages, education levels, income levels, and marital status--1,500 per year for a total of almost 50,000 individuals thus far--and so it gives us a most reliable picture of what's happened to men's and women's happiness over the last few decades. There have been five other major studies around the world and more than 1.3 million men and women have been surveyed over the last 40 years. But wherever researchers have been able to collect reliable data on happiness, the finding is always the same: greater educational, political, and employment opportunities have corresponded to decreases in life happiness for women, as compared to men.

First, since 1972, women's overall level of happiness has dropped, both relative to where they were forty years ago, and relative to men. You find this drop in happiness in women regardless of whether they have kids, how many kids they have, how much money they make, how healthy they are, what job they hold, whether they are married, single or divorced, how old they are, or what race they are.

The second discovery is, this: though women begin their lives more fulfilled than men, as they age, they gradually become less happy. Men, in contrast, get happier as they get older. This creeping unhappiness can seep into all aspects of a woman's life. When the researchers asked more specific questions, such as, "How satisfied are you with your marriage?" and "How satisfied are you with the things you own?" and "How satisfied are you with your finances?" the pattern was always the same: women begin their life more satisfied than men, and wind up less satisfied.

Now these trends are not caused by women working longer hours than men. We know this because women don't work more hours than men. Nor are they caused by gender-based stereotyping. Sure, forty years ago such stereotyping was still dominant but that is no longer true. Nor, surprisingly, is it caused by women bearing a disproportionate burden of the workload at home, the 'second-shift' as some have labeled it. This explanation falls not because women don't do more cooking, cleaning and child-caring than men; they still do. It falls because when it comes to the sharing of 'home' duties, the trends are all towards greater parity.

Perhaps one explanation lies in the fact that when women stepped into male- dominated realms; they put more demands — and stress — on themselves. If they once judged themselves on looks, kids, hubbies, gardens and dinner parties, now they judged themselves on looks, kids, hubbies, gardens, dinner parties — and grad school, work, office deadlines and meshing a two-career marriage The more important things that are crowded into their lives, the less attention women are able to give to each individual thing.

Women are generally much harder on themselves than men. They tend to attach to other people more strongly, beat themselves up more when they lose attachments, take things more personally at work and pop far more antidepressants.

Another daunting thing: America is more youth and looks obsessed than ever, with an array of expensive cosmetic procedures that allow women to be their own Frankenstein Barbies. Men can age in an attractive way while women are expected to replicate their looks of the 20s into their 60s.

In summary there seem to be a number of alternative explanations for these findings.

1. Women have become more like men and their lives have tended to imitate them as well. Men have historically been less happy than women. So it might not be surprising if the things in the workplace that always made men unhappy are now bedeviling women as well.

2. Female happiness was artificially inflated in the 1970s because of the feminist movement and the optimism it engendered among women. Yes, things have gotten better for women over the last few decades, but maybe change has happened a lot more slowly than anticipated. Thus, relative to these lofty expectations, things have been a disappointment.

3. There was enormous social pressure on women in the old days to pretend they were happy even if they weren’t. Now, society allows women to express their feelings openly when they are dissatisfied with life.

4. The changes brought about through the women’s movement may well have decreased women’s happiness. The increased opportunity to succeed in many dimensions may have led to an increased likelihood of believing that one’s life is not measuring up. Similarly, women may now compare their lives to a broader group, including men, and find their lives more likely to come up short in this assessment.

Or women may simply find the complexity and increased pressure in their modern lives to have come at the cost of happiness.