The advances of feminism: Are women any happier today?

COMPLEXITY

Greater opportunity has made women’s lives more complex. I sometimes envy the stability my mother had then, living in our home town surrounded by close family, but I know she would give her right arm to have had my opportunities for education, travel and economic independence.

Women today judge ourselves and are judged by others across a broader field than before. That can be stressful. In the past we had to perform as wives, mothers and homemakers; now we are weighed up for our career achievements as well, on top of the perennial pressure to be slim and look fabulous. As one colleague said, it’s not that we’re unhappy because we have too much choice, but because we’ve got too much to do.

At root, though, it is nonsensical to claim women were happier in the sexist 1970s, because it is impossible to make objective comparisons between our respective frustrations and satisfactions, and the effect they have on individuals. This generation does, however, have more control and self-determination than our mothers did, and we shouldn’t surrender that just because it makes things more complicated.

That would be reducing women to the state of infants who don’t know what’s best for ourselves, incapable of authentic, self-realized happiness and fit only for the bliss of ignorance.

The very idea the women’s movement has won a hollow victory is ludicrous for the simple reason that there hasn’t yet been anything remotely resembling a feminist triumph. We still bear the lion’s share of childcare, housework and looking after elderly relatives and we still only earn around 80 percent of our male counterparts’ salaries.

As reported this summer, 130 companies in the FTSE 350 still have all male boards and women hold only 34 executive directorships out of a possible total of almost 1,000.

So after centuries of women playing a secondary role, we are still in the relatively early stages of transition, and it is far too early to start saying that equality isn’t making us happy. We shouldn’t start sounding a retreat when the advance has only just begun.