The paradox of women's happiness

How happy would you say you are? As movements around the world erode the gaps between the genders, one unexpected gap is no different: while women in the 1970s typically reported higher subjective wellbeing than men, female happiness is on the decline.

This seems paradoxical—objective measures of female wellbeing since 1970 find women have made enormous gains. ‘Given these shifts of rights and bargaining power from men to women over the years, we might expect to see a concurrent shift in happiness towards women and away from men,’ write Betsey Stevenson and Justin Wolfers, both University of Pennsylvania. The Paradox of Declining Female Happiness points out that while ‘the expansion in women’s opportunities has been extensively studied, the concurrent decline in subjective wellbeing has gone largely unnoticed.’ 

Examining the ways women’s lives have improved over the years begs the question—why are women becoming unhappier? The wage gap is closing (albeit slowly), access to education is almost universal, we have an unprecedented level of control over fertility and sexual liberation, female work force participation has risen to record levels, and ‘better market outcomes for women have likely improved their bargaining position in the home by raising their opportunities outside of marriage’. In other words: women have been released from traditional gender roles and have more opportunities than ever. The result—they have more work than ever.

Arlie Hochschild and Anne Machung argue in The Second Shift that as women moved into the work force, they weren’t relieved of any of the burdens at home. This is the ‘second shift’—women work office hours and then take on the majority of the responsibilities at home in the form of maintenance, cooking, washing and childcare. Although many surveys prove otherwise and that men are increasingly taking on the housework as well, the emotional burdens remain squarely on female shoulders. The Second Shift points this out: ‘this is perhaps best exemplified by the familiar refrains of a man “helping” around the house or being a good dad when “babysitting” the kids.’ At the same time, the emotional level can refer to the amount of enjoyment a person gets out of their tasks: a man may see ‘helping around the house’ as enjoyable because he is helping his partner; a woman may not get this happiness boost. This is highlighted in the paper by Alan Krueger, showing men have had a net increase in the pleasantness of their daily activities, while women showed no change.

But Stevenson and Wolfers are quick to point out that these declines in happiness ‘arising due to the “second shift” should impact working mothers more than others. Similarly, declines stemming from the challenges of single-parenthood should have a greater impact on non-white women and white women with less education.’ They found no evidence of such changes.

Equally strange, 72 percent of women today believe that having more choices in society gives them more opportunity to be happy. And yet, across industrialised nations, women’s happiness is decreasing compared to men’s. ‘This finding of a decline in women’s wellbeing relative to that of men raises questions about whether modern social constructs have made women worse off.’

Stevenson and Wolfers explain there are many reasons for a decline in women’s happiness that have nothing to do with empowerment making them unhappy. Rather, there ‘may be other important socio-economic forces’ making women worse off that have not been documented. ‘Broad social shifts’ alter how subjective wellbeing is measured: ‘it is likely that women are aggregating satisfaction over an increasingly larger domain set’. While women may previously have felt perfectly satisfied at home, this was their only domain. If they are now perfectly satisfied at home, but less so at work, their average happiness will naturally be lower. ‘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’—now there’s more to want and more to achieve and more pressure to do so.

Another interesting thought is that people in good circumstances may be better off, but ‘may require more to declare themselves happy’. If your baseline is higher, you may feel less happy compared to someone whose baseline is lower.

Wellbeing is subjective: ‘objective conditions such as health, comfort, virtue or wealth’ don’t come into play. Determining female happiness and the reasons for its apparent decline is challenging and it may be the case that it’s simply the median that has fallen slightly. Either way, women on average report being unhappier than before, and decoding this paradox ‘may be the key to a better understanding of wellbeing’ overall. ■