Today I want to talk about why women are so unhappy.

This is a real thing, and if you read about this in the papers, you're most likely to

read about it under the headline, the paradox of declining female happiness.

And I would put paradox in heavy scare quotes here, and you'll see why in just a second.

But basically what this is based on is 2009 paper by Betsy Stevenson and Justin Wolffers.

Their husband and wife are a partner and partner team, whatever they would call themselves,

I guess.

And they have pointed out that since 1970, between 1970 and 1990, women in surveys and

as they sort of described themselves became progressively less and less happy relative

to men.

And perplexing to people who think that feminism has been an unqualified good because they

look at this and they think, well, everything is going great, you know, or getting better

rather for women, of course.

You know, they're in the workplace more and more, they're getting paid more and more,

there are more female CEOs, there are, you know, all of these sort of victories that feminism

has won during that time, which is supposed to be an unqualified good.

Suddenly, there's this paradox, the paradox of the climbing female happiness.

Why aren't women getting happier as feminism makes more and more gains, especially what

we call second wave and third wave feminism, these sort of post, you know, voting rights

feminism after women win the vote in 1920 in America.

We have sort of a period then of focusing on like economic stuff and you get the equal pay

act in 1963.

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