Well, duh. Westworld females are "second-class" citizens (third- to no-ordinal, if race-weighting "class") and arguably an FASB-defined property --asset (liability)-- owned by a third party (with respect to the acct or atty, state fiduciaries).

Women are not "free" people. Some Westworld columnists pretend that huge remuneration from "productivity", broadcast exposure, marriage status, or all attributes foregoing  establish an accurate index of the welfare every "woman," as compared to male and man reported satisfaction with individual performances in fulfilling life goals (if any).

Sadly, every woman is not female. Not every man is male.

Diversity is the key to economic and political evolution.

From conversations with the women in my life and my own experience, I feel this may be partially because of the message that one can have it all — career, family, personal life — and the expectations placed on women by the American culture and society to do it all. The culture and society of America, however does not offer much if any support for a woman to do it all. And, when a woman doesn't live up to this nearly unobtainable expectation, she may feel like a failure or worthless or sad or a combination of all.

There are all sorts of damned if you do damned if you don't messages in America toward women. For example, women are expected to rear children, but there is little state support for women staying home with young children. There is no long term paid maternity leave with employment promise when she returns to work. The quality of child care is often second rate and even then expensive. The people who look after young children are often poorly paid and poorly educated professionals. The focus is on warehousing children, not cultivating their minds and bodies.

If a woman should quit her job to take care of children, then she earns no retirement (the government does not provide social security recognition, for example) and no income and it is nigh impossible to re-enter the workplace after several years of being a stay-at-home mother. Older women may feel useless in America after they no longer can have children, especially if no employer will hire them for what they are worth.

Conversely, if a woman should focus on her career, then she may be seen as a bad mother. She may have to go back to work weeks after her baby was born. Employers may be inflexible about hours, nursing, or needing to stay home with a sick child or family member.

Add to this an onslaught of negative body images and plastic body being held up as the example, a woman may feel compelled to spend time at the gym or saving up for plastic surgery or some other 'beautification' effort. Women are objectified and not taken seriously. Women politicians get more feedback on their wardrobe and hairstyles than their positions and policies.

Finally, American women are expected, I think, to do the housework and cooking. With only 24-hours in the day, there isn't much time left for a woman to do things for herself to help her be happy.

It might be that women generally suffer more from the libertarian economic stress. The "free markets" and feminism might have delivered everything to a low percentage of women, but not so much to the majority.

At the moment, it is interesting how much the financial crisis is changing the gender happiness perceptions. There is quite some talk, how much the crisis is hurting male egos, which probably shows, how relatively easy it was to grow macho together with growing markets (and might explain slightly growing male happiness perceptions).

But it is hard to see how the crisis can improve the general female happiness. Women might be indeed very sensitive to expectations, including their own - but they are also the choosers and expectation creators. If the future won't offer anything like what used to be conventional expectations, their gender sadness might inflate.

Female happiness must be much more than new feminist powers or opportunity promises. Humanity might have forgotten a lot of "know how" about happiness during the latest "enlightenment" revolution.

It is really interesting to look at the original report. Weirdly, back around 1970 the female-to-male suicide ratio (figure 7) was the highest it has been in the period spanning 1950 to 2005. It declined by from there to reach a minimum between about 1990 and 2005. The female suicide rate approximately halved over the period.

So at least some of the decline in happiness is due to fewer of the really unhappy women actually killing themselves. Reassuring, in a way.