July 28, 2021
In an article for Ms.Magazine titled "Want to Make Your Country Happier? Elect Women", Riane Eisler and CPS Team Member, Robyn Baker, explain how there are many obvious benefits to having more women in positions of political and economic power but electing more women to office also correlates to greater overall happiness.
In the article, Eisler and Baker help readers take a step back and think about what national happiness truly is.
Happiness is often perceived as an elusive feeling, a fleeting moment in a person’s life. National happiness might sound absurd, but a recent report by the United Nations reveals that happiness can actually be a public policy with highly successful results. The 2021 World Happiness Report shows that high levels of government spending on human infrastructure—the services and systems that improve people’s quality of life—are the key to happiness.
Eisler and Baker shed light on the correlation between national happiness and women in office.
However, neither the World Happiness Report nor policymakers acknowledge the connection between the two: Human infrastructure is supported by women in leading government positions. This correlation can be explained by another still generally ignored fact: that care work, such as caring for children and the elderly, has been devalued under a hidden gendered system of values that has gone along with the ranking of men/”masculinity” over women/”femininity.”
The article concludes with a message that Eisler has been emphasizing for years.
In reality, a higher valuing of the stereotypically feminine—caring, caregiving and nonviolence—is not only good for women. It is also good for men and children of both genders, as well as for business.
In other words, investing in what was once seen as “women’s work” is key to success in our new technological era.
Read the entire article here.
See also: Riane Eisler on the Economic Value of Caring
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