Wednesday, March 08, 2006

A study to irritate women on International women's' Day

Desperate Feminist Wives - Why wanting equality makes women unhappy. By Meghan O'Rourke

From the above Slate article on a recent sociological study:

Stay-at-home wives, according to the authors, are more content than their working counterparts. And happiness, they found, has less to do with division of labor than with the level of commitment and "emotional work" men contribute (or are perceived to contribute). But the most interesting data may be that the women who strongly identify as progressive - —the 15 percent who agree most with feminist ideals - —have a harder time being happy than their peers, according to an analysis that has been provided exclusively to Slate. Feminist ideals, not domestic duties, seem to be what make wives morose.

Before any feminist reader (in the unlikely event I have any) throws their latte at the screen, the article goes on to give the figures and qualify this conclusion in such a way that it makes it hardly worth either side trying to get much ideological mileage out of the study. Still, if I have briefly annoyed some Labor voting feminist out there, it was worth it.

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