(Un)happiness and the Feminist Movement

From Menletter September 2009

By Tim Baehr

The modern feminist movement got launched almost fifty years ago. The English edition of Simone de Beauvoir's The Second Sex appeared in 1953, and the Pill was available by 1961. Betty Friedan established the National Organization for Women (NOW) in 1966.

Many of us, men and women, have lived through and mostly benefited from women's success in broadening their options socially, psychologically, and materially. There have been occasional backlashes from both women and men, but we've witnessed the narrowing of the wage gap (to nearly zero if you follow some of the data interpretations), the rise of the two-earner family, the increased involvement of men in child-rearing, and many other events. We've seen women as heads of countries - including, almost, the US - and have even seen women rise to the top in some corporations whose glass ceilings have been breached or taken down. Women outnumber men in the workforce and in colleges; women are presidents of prestigious universities; women hold a higher proportion than men of management and supervisory positions.

We have created a society in which everyone should be happier, especially women.

Women are not.

Since the 1970s, women have become sadder and men have become happier. Over their lifetime, happy young women become increasingly unhappier as they age, as men become increasingly happier.

A recent study by Betsey Stevenson and Justin Wolfers at the University of Pennsylvania has reported that women are less happy than they were in the 1970s, and men are happier. Several other studies, some tracking "happiness" since 1972, have come to a similar conclusion.

Did the feminist movement backfire? Did it create more happy men and fewer happy women?

As with any sociological studies, the pundits and commentators have lurched out of the woodwork so fast after the latest report that they've left sharp splinters on the floor of public discourse.

Like the blind men and the elephant, each pundit finds one or two small aspects of society on which to lay the blame, and then inflates those aspects as THE reason. The "Second Shift," in which women coming home from work face more housework? Why not? Hormones of menopause? Plausible. Unfulfilled expectations raised by the early feminist movement? Sure. The culture of youth and beauty and supermodels? Let's blame the advertisers and the fashion industry. Having children? That's documented as a source of unhappiness, but moms still love the little darlings. And have no regrets. Most of the time. Are women unhappy, now that they've taken men's roles, away from women's "natural" caregiving instincts? Sure, we can make a case for that.

Conservative and liberal elephant-gazers are having a field day. Conservatives: the feminist movement went too far! Liberals: the feminist movement didn't go far enough!

Oh, and why is men's happiness increasing? The one correlating factor seems to be an overall increase in national prosperity. It can't be work-life conflicts; nearly twice as many men report conflicts as they did in 1977. (My take, for what it's worth: We've been spending more time with our kids and puttering about the house. That's fulfilling in a way that a job isn't. And there are more conflicts because, having had a taste, we want more kid-time and puttering-time.)

If Mamma Ain't Happy

Why bother worrying about women's happiness, especially in a journal for men? I think that, because of the recent studies, men's and women's happiness is going to come up at home and at school or the workplace. We men should at least have some inkling of what's going on. Also, the stories may make otherwise happy women in our lives question their happiness. Data and trends are just statistics, and all statistics have exceptions. But men and women also have a herd instinct that can make negative news and bad feelings contagious, exceptions be damned. Finally, I want to counsel us men not to rush in and try to fix things. They may not be fixable, or we may not be the appropriate ones to fix them. So far, we haven't even been asked.

What we can do, if faced with one or more unhappy women, is listen. The unhappiness may be generated by the news that "everybody" is unhappy, or it may have more concrete sources. Whatever the source, consider it real and talk it out. Leo Tolstoy, in Anna Karenina, said "Happy families are all alike; every unhappy family is unhappy in its own way." It would be useful to find out what way.

If Pappa Ain't Happy

The trend in men's happiness may be upward over the past four decades and during each of our lives. But that doesn't mean we're all dancing in the streets with silly grins on our faces. Things can make us sad, too - missed opportunities, failures, the sense that life is passing us by, the crushing boredom of work, loss of love, and a myriad of other disappointments. One huge disappointment for many of us who grew up in the 50s and 60s, I suspect, was being told that work should somehow be fulfilling and finding out it wasn't. And I think that we, and our budding feminist age-mates, got sold a bill of goods. I became a little happier when I finally figured out, late in my career, that a job was a job, period. No one above my immediate supervisor (and sometimes not even then) gave a rat's ass about me. I was a "resource," a number. Consciously or not, willfully or not, I was blind to that fact. To the extent that this reality may be fueling women's unhappiness as they penetrate further into the workplace, we can at least commiserate. It might help.

Our Own Voices

Researchers confidently tell us we're happy or unhappy. Pundits confidently tell us why. And we listen. But we have the choice to listen to ourselves, too.