You’re unhappy. Even after meditation. Even after retail therapy.

You’re unhappier than men and unhappier than women have been over the past 37 years, reports one study based on annual surveys conducted by the University of Chicago. 

But don’t rush to grab the Prozac just yet—the statistics may be muddling the facts. And women are not doomed to a life of the blues, other experts counter. Small changes can add up to big boosts on the happiness scale.

The unhappiness data is based on a study published recently in the American Economic Journal by Betsey Stevenson and Justin Wolfers, professors at the Wharton School of the University of Pennsylvania. They analyzed yearly data from the General Social Survey, a survey of American society administered by the National Opinion Research Center at the University of Chicago.

Stevenson and Wolfers' analysis found that women’s sense of happiness has decreased steadily since 1972. Moreover, they found that women indicate they become less happy over the course of a lifetime, while men become happier. The degree of "happiness" is based on survey responses about happiness, satisfaction with life, and actual incidence of depression.

Stevenson and Wolfers named their study, "The Paradox of Declining Female Happiness," referencing the seeming disconnect between increasing opportunities and decreasing satisfaction for many women.  

“In aggregate, women’s happiness is going down,” said Marcus Buckingham, a motivational speaker and author who tracked down traits of happy women.  

Buckingham, who lives in Los Angeles, is a former Gallup researcher. He studies successful people to determine what they share and how they’ve achieved success. For his book, "Find Your Strongest Life," he administered a “Strong Life Test” to happy and successful women to determine what they were doing right. Not surprisingly, these women shared several personality traits, and Buckingham is sharing the answers to help other women maximize their own happiness.

While many strive to create balance in their life, Buckingham said the key to fulfillment is to intentionally imbalance your life toward the specific moments that bring the most happiness.

Rather than focusing on general roles such as “being a mom,” happy women focused on the aspects of motherhood that bring them the most joy. Whether it’s going for a family walk along the lake or finding a new activity to do with the kids, happy women identified what made them happy, and they exploited it to draw strength and fulfillment from life.

“They didn’t strive for balance, they knew that was setting themselves up for failure,” said Buckingham. “They strove for fullness.”

The happiest women felt in control and able to change their lives for the better. They played up their strengths. They took themselves seriously. They were aware that the details of the moment matter. They knew that their own feelings are important and that being strong for others is a by-product of being strong for oneself. They knew what moments are invigorating, and they capitalized on them, said Buckingham.

“There’s an overall sense that life isn’t a battle to be fought, but a source of energy and strength if you could learn how to tap into it,” he said.
 
Several things are happening in terms of Stevenson and Wolfers findings, Buckingham said. First, he warned that, because the statistics are aggregates, there are inevitably “a lot of exceptions.” African-American women, for example, are slightly happier than they were in 1972, but this is apparently due to advances in race relations and not gender relations.

Second, women aren’t necessarily unhappy—they’re less happy. The survey respondents in most cases shifted from “very happy” to a more neutral state, but not outright unhappiness.

Still, it’s a paradox. After all, the 1970s Women’s Lib movement was intended to empower women. The victories for women’s rights created myriad choices for women in the realms of work, earnings, power, reproductive rights and education.

In some cases, these choices become burdensome and stressful as women take on more roles and juggle more responsibilities, Buckingham said.

In 1977, 74 percent of men felt they should be the breadwinner of a household. Today, only 40 percent of males (and females) believe men should be the breadwinner. So more women are working now, and there is an expectation that women should work. Many of these working women also maintain primary responsibilities for home and childcare, which can be overwhelming.

Focusing on the aggregate numbers, Buckingham has written a blog series on the Huffington Post expounding on the question, “What’s happening to women’s happiness?”

Yet David Myers, a psychology professor at Hope College in Holland, Mich., a different perspective. He said the survey data shows the percent of women who describe themselves as “very happy” has declined modestly since 1972, yet has consistently been higher than the percentage of “very happy” men.

So perhaps women as a whole are less happy than they used to be. But the happiest women outnumber—and outhappy—the happiest men.

Regardless of what gender is happier or why, there is one bright spot in the research.

“Everyone can be a little happier than they were before,” said Buckingham.


He also said changing attitudes about gender roles indicate that men are becoming more like women, who are becoming less happy with their situation. So will men be feeling less happy several years down the line? Only time will tell.

“That to me is an interesting phenomenon,” said Buckingham.