In what is an otherwise excellent gloss of the article, you omit one possible explanation for the results: that women are simply more comfortable expressing dissatisfaction nowadays than when the original data set was collected.

That’s a very interesting idea, Victoria.

I also appreciated the wit and style of the rest of your posting.

Good point about the ability to express dissatisfaction. That is certainly one variable to consider.

I also agree that the sexual revolution is an important variable. I doubt that it has made women happier. That doesn’t mean that I want us to go back in time, but increased freedom can paradoxically make us more unhappy until we learn how to handle that freedom. And I think that many women are much happier in stable relationships than when acting out a free sexuality.

In other words, it’s not that women were happier in the 70s, but rather, that they were less comfortable expressing their dissatisfaction. Lavazza remarks that today it is less socially acceptable for men to complain, and I probably agree. But let’s look at women in the 1970s, embroiled as they still were in restrictive norms of what constituted happiness in the good ol’ days, i.e. when the nuclear family unit was championed in the 50s. I am somewhat skeptical that many of these women had the idealogical latitude to parse their subjective well-being the way that women today can. Even in the throws of sexual revolution, I doubt society was at a point where it could nuture such subversive introspective for the majority of the female population. This kink doesn’t overrule other explanations, but deserves to be taken into account, anyway.

We also have to be aware that, although the data collection seems to indicate that female dissatisfaction spans all demographic groups, most of our deliberation has centered on the middle to upper class. So, while we have some plausible explanations regarding shoulder pads and the entrance into more alienating forms of labor, we are forgetting that some women (many, actually) entered the work force a long time before the sexual revolution reared its bra-burning head. And many of these women were performing some of the most dehumanizing labor there is out there. A good debate on this topic would ask what the sexual revolution did for these women, and how their relative happiness changed as a result.

Thanks to all for the food for thought.

Your remark that wonen have a few decads of adapting makes snese to me. I remember books for women in the 80’s giving hints at how to fit in in the coprorate world. Tip 1: Never cry in front of anyone. You can’t break down in tears and then turn around and expect to be taken seriously as an adult. This is not a gender thing, or even culturally determined - it’s just common sense that self-control is the root of all power, and when you are in charge, you have to be able to at least like you a ein control, if only for the sake of your subordinates. Second tip: cover your arms. Men woear bare-shoulder shirts and suits because visibility is a ofrm of vulnerabiliyo, or at least submisson ot someone else’s gaze - same goes for you, toots. Thus the craze for fotball shoulders in the mid-80’s.