What’s up with women?

     Recent studies have shown that lately, women’s levels of happiness have been dropping and creating a larger and larger gap between the happiness levels of men.  This article from the New York Times gives many possible reasons to why this could be.  Some of the reasons include:

 

• More women have been joining the work force, causing women to spend more time on paid labor rather than cooking or cleaning at home. 
• Men have replaced activities that they don’t enjoy with ones that they do enjoy, giving them more leisure time.
• Women create higher expectations for themselves, and, while trying to reach these incredibly high expectations, become stressed out.

 

The article goes on to talk about high school students as well.  Girls in high school are apparently less happy due to the “hottie theory”.  This is the theory that girls should be effortlessly hot.  Many girls become stressed out because not only do they have to worry about their schoolwork and grades, they also have to worry about being flawlessly beautiful at any given moment.

 

Steven Levitt, otherwise known as the Freakanomics blogger at the New York Times, also writes about this subject in this blog entry.  This article comments on how women used to feel pressure to appear happy on the outside, even if that wasn’t the case.  Now that times have changed, women don’t feel this constant pressure to appear happy all the time. 

 

I think that women should just suck it up.  I’m not trying to sound mean or anything, but I don’t think women realize how good they have it.  They’re getting better paying jobs and more equal treatment than they used to.  Back in the day, it was frowned upon when women weren’t at home all the time cleaning or cooking for their family.  Now it’s unusual to have a “stay-at-home mom”; instead, most women are out bringing in a second, or sometimes even main, income.

 

If women today had to live a day in the life of a woman in the 50’s, I don’t think they would survive at all.  If they were to do this, I think they would be significantly happier.

  

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