If you are looking for something to read this weekend, that demonstrates the way society's views on feminism are shifting, Liberated and Unhappy is a very interesting opinion piece from the New York Times last week, written by Ross Douthat, commenting on The Paradox of Declining Female Happiness, a recent research paper by Betsey Stevenson and Justin Wolfers (29 pages long but quite fascinating - somehow I downloaded it for free, but it looks like you may now need to pay to access it unfortunately). Here is the second last paragraph of that paper:Finally, the changes brought about through the women's movement may have decreased women's happiness. 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. Similarly, women may now compare their lives to a broader group, including men, and find their lives more likely to come up short in this assessment. Or women may simply find the complexity and increased pressure in their modern lives to have come at the cost of happiness.You can then read the comment on this article on the Council for Biblical Manhood and Womanhood website, and also on Carolyn McCulley's own website.
Picture from www.flickr.com.
2 comments:
Thank you Alison for pointing me to some very interesting papers! The one from Stevenson and Wolfers is available elsewhere by doing a google search.
I look forward to some discussion about other aspects of Carolyn Mc Culley's book.
Thanks for commenting here Susie. Yes, these are interesting times we are living in, where I think people are beginning to reassess the society we have created!
I hope you benefit from the rest of the book.
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