Bluebird: Women and the New Psychology of Happiness

CAN A WOMAN BE SMART, EMPOWERED, AND HAPPY ? Happiness has become a serious business. Where twentiethcentury psychology focused on depression and illness, in the new millennium scientists have begun focusing on €œpositive psychology€€”the study of happiness. Ariel Gore first became intrigued by this subject when she discovered that Positive Psychology was the most popular course on the Harvard campus. As she read deeper into the topic, she noticed something disturbing: everyone in this happy land was a man. Worse still, some of these new €œexperts€ seemed hell-bent on proving that women with traditional values and breadwinning husbands€”those who had made €œan effort to expect less,€ according to one sociologist€”were more content than women with feminist values. The more she read the more she wondered: Can a woman be smart, empowered, and happy? Determined to find out, Gore began her own €œstudy in livin