Are women unhappier post-1972?

I think I have the answer. While I completely agree with the feminist movement, there is one really bad thing that came out of the feminist movement. Once women started working and the majority of households began being two income households, suddenly everything started getting more and more expensive.It's like all the businesses out there got together and said, " this feminist movmenet is going to make us a lot of money.

Let's double the cost of rent and groceries, but we'll do it over time so nobody notices! " The cost of living skyrocketed and, in addition to that, there came about more things on which to dispose of your disposable income, which have since become standards that all households really need to have to stay informed, like computers, internet, cell phones, cable. Now, suddenly, almost forty years later, we all NEED two incomes to survive.

Suddenly, you can no longer make it on the hubby's income alone. It's really sad that this has happened. I believe if women are unhappier now, it's because of the extra financial strain.

In 1972, we fought for the opportunity the choice to work if we so desired, but now it's becoming no longer a choice for many women, but a necessity, to hold down a full-time job and when something moves from being a choice to being forced, it suddenly becomes more like entrapment. The following is cut and pasted from thepeoplehistory.com/1972.html How Much things cost in 1972 Year End Close Dow Jones Industrial Average 1020 Average Cost of new house $27,550.00 Average Income per year $11,800.00 Average Monthly Rent $165.00 Cost of a gallon of Gas 55 cents Take, for example, the cost of a NEW house in 1972; $27,5000. This is a little over twice the yearly average income listed above.

Right now, the average monthly income is around $50,000. How many NEW houses do you see around you that cost a little over $100,000? Not very many!

It's hard to find an older home for that price! Yup, we screwed ourselves. I still agree with the feminist movement, but in the process we all bent over and asked for it.

Yes. We are supposed to have more choices, we have less. Being a stay at home mom is virtually impossible, we are required to join the work force because our families cannot survive without our income.

Now we have the freedom to do it all, which ends up feeling like we have to do it all. In the end nothing gets our full attention and nothing gets done well. Our children are suffering for it.

In 1970, a "guidance counselor" at my school asked me what my career goals were. I told him I wanted to be a veterinarian, and had been working toward that goal. He told me girls didn't do that, and that I should consider something else.

When I tried to get my first job out of high school, I was told that my qualifications were excellent but that they didn't hire women because we worked six months, got pregnant, and left the work force. It was considered perfectly acceptable to refer to female co-workers in retail grocery in the late 1970s as "rags" and say they couldn't do the work as well as men. If a woman rose to a position of management, the common belief was that it was because she was sleeping with those in charge of hiring decisions.(Local plywood plant).

Women who divorced their husbands were often denied credit, or had their credit scores impaired by an irresponsible spouse. I didn't need a feminist movement to tell me the deck was stacked against me in the job market and work environment. Other respondents have cited economic prosperity as if to indicate that the feminist movement was someone the catalyst that increased the price of housing and groceries.

War, oil embargoes, war, inflation, war, savings and loan bailouts, war, dot-come speculation, war, and real estate scams were responsible for financial pressures, not women's rights. Having options is always better. In the 60s, I already had friends whose moms had to work - but they were limited as to what they were allowed to do.

I can't tell you how many of my high school friends had marriages fail and had to go out and make a living for themselves and their children or accept poverty, food stamps, and welfare. Several proudly and fiercely rejected those options, raised their kids, and are management themselves after 20 years of work. They aren't reliant on anyone else for their happiness - they made it for themselves.

Life may not have been an unending merry-go-round of joy along the way, but being reliant on a husband hadn't worked out, either. The feminist movement didn't offer women happiness. It offered us greater opportunities.

Happiness, like security or discontent, is a changing construct with thousands of factors contributing. As a contributing factor, the successes of the feminist movement allowed us more opportunities to be happy and unhappy than we had before.

I have to agree that women are unhappier in today’s society. There are certainly a great many reasons for this change, many of which were, in fact, caused in one way or another by the feminist movement. In my personal experience, the primary cause of strife lies in the numerous responsibilities a woman carries.

Prior to many women joining the workforce, we were housewives. Our responsibilities included (but were not limited to): cleaning the house, preparing meals, cleaning the dishes, washing, folding and putting away laundry, caring for our children, etc. With women moving into the workforce have these daily tasks decreased? For most women, the answer is no.

And it is no longer a choice of whether to work or not, as households are no longer sustainable on the average single income. Women, as a rule, must work a full time job and still continue to run their households. That is not to say that men don’t chip in where they can, but the responsibility still, in most cases, falls on the woman.

In addition, if a woman would like to further her education and obtain a higher-salaried career, she will need to go to college which may upset her ever-ticking biological time-clock. What a struggle it is to decide between going to college to better herself and starting a family before it’s “too late”. Many women are born to be maternal, loving people who want, and almost need, to have children - and until she does, she may feel a void in her life.

Once she does have children, they need her attention as well as her support in going on doctor’s visits, or in their extra-curricular activities. Our children suffer from our lack of time to put into raising them properly and grow up to have a lack of respect, adding to our daily struggles. Add too these things, juggling such a busy schedule can leave women with little or no time for relaxation, time alone, or friends – of course this would cause her some form of depression!

If that isn’t enough – consider the pressures that females are subject to right from the start of their life! The media is constantly pushing images of ultra-skinny, airbrushed women at us.It seems that many girls now dream of being sex objects, rather than beautiful, well-rounded women. There is a constant pressure to be “sexy” and girls are becoming sexually active at younger and younger ages.

If we fail to become these “sex objects”, we are branded as prudes or “bitches”. If we succumb to the pressures, we are called loose and fall prey to meaningless one-night-stands and empty relationships that leave us feeling used and un-loved. Before the feminist movement, life was simple, albeit sometimes unfulfilling and boring.

Women were to grow up, marry the man she loves, have a family, and care for them as well as she could. All this said, I personally still feel fortunate to be able to have a full (read: hectic/busy) and rewarding life as a modern woman, even if I do occasionally feel unappreciated, lonely or depressed. We owe a lot to the women who brought us this far, but I don’t think they intended to tie our hands and force us into the workplace.

I cant really gove you an answer,but what I can give you is a way to a solution, that is you have to find the anglde that you relate to or peaks your interest. A good paper is one that people get drawn into because it reaches them ln some way.As for me WW11 to me, I think of the holocaust and the effect it had on the survivors, their families and those who stood by and did nothing until it was too late.