Men Are Unhappy: Good News For Women?

This just in: Men are as miserable as women. At least that’s what we learn from a new study by Arizona State professor Chris M. Herbst, who suggests that men’s happiness has taken as big a dive as women’s over the past several years. We think that’s good news. Back in 2009, Penn economists Betsey [...]

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Happy’s Last Stand. And Aprons, Too.

Let’s just agree for one last time that all this happiness business in the wake of the “Paradox of Women’s Declining Happiness” study has a very unhappy subtext: Blame the victim. The victim being us. You’re not happy? The horror! There must be something wrong with you. Blame yourself! Blame feminism! Blame your choices! Whatever [...]

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International What Day?

Yesterday was International Women’s Day, and I spent it wondering how to write about it–without sounding like I’d been body-snatched by Debbie Downer. (Why? Well, I’m not especially interested in beating a dead horse, but by now you know the score: we’re paid less and underrepresented. Child care and health care are dismal. Our ranking [...]

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Gimme a Smile and Pass the Kool-Aid

Just when we thought it couldn’t get any weirder, there’s this: on-the-job happiness coaching. Kid you not. According to the Wall Street Journal, corralling employees in a conference room and showing them how to make happy is apparently the new black: Happiness coaching is seeping into the workplace. A growing number of employers, including UBS, [...]

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Want Happy? Try Sad!

Frankly, all this hype about happy is making me sad. It’s not enough we have folks like Marcus Buckingham telling us how to be happy — and making us feel guilty because we are not. Or the incessant volleys about the paradox of women’s declining happiness. But, frankly, despite the wealth of books, blogs, life [...]

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Feminism 2.0: Enough?

When everything is on the menu, it takes an awful lot of willpower to say, you know, I’m not really that hungry. Even if you’re really not that hungry. Even if, in fact, you’re stuffed. This being the season of the cocktail party, I’m unable to think in anything other than food metaphors, but, in [...]

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Choices For All! Choices For All?

Marcus Buckingham has done it again. In this week’s HuffPo installment, Buckingham gets started by citing Time magazine’s special on the State of Women as saying that the gender war is over, and it was a tie. But Buckingham takes it one step further: I’m not so sure. In a war, no matter the outcome [...]

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Quick Hits for the Weekend

First, because we play fair in this space, a response to Barbara Ehrenreich’s commentary on the happiness gap — if you aren’t sick to death of it (FYI: we are) — from Justin Wolfers, one of the authors of the original study, in the New York Times. Read it here. Second, a piece from Bloomberg [...]

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Newsflash: Gloria Steinem Did NOT Cause The Happiness Gap

Before we put the happiness gap to bed, here’s a fitting last word: some smoking-smart commentary from Barbara Ehrenreich I found on Mother Jones. The piece is entited “Are Women Getting Sadder? Or are we all just getting a lot more gullible?” That should tip you off. Ehrenreich’s essay echoes a few of the points [...]

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Zeitgeist: The Convo Continues

Karin Lowney-Seed: http://www.twobluechairs.com/ It’s not quite a cocktail party, but the buzz is kicking up. Just a sampling of the smart talk our readers have posted over the past couple of weeks. Join in! On Just Some Undecided Girl: A Guest Post by Katie Powers: Wow… you remind me so much of myself more than [...]

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