This is the second of 10 articles about unhappiness in contemporary women.

Q: What factors are contributing to women's unhappiness?

A: New York Times columnist Maureen Dowd believes women are unhappy today because there are too many important functions in their lives. That fact renders women unable to give the attention they feel is necessary to all the important aspects of their lives.

According to columnist Taylor Trudon of the Daily Campus, women still are constrained by social inequities. Trudon believes women are held to higher standards and more rigid standards than men. The result of this phenomenon is that women are judged more harshly than men in terms of failing in their respective roles.

The Huffington Post documented that women still earn 77 cents for every dollar earned by men. In addition, women earn only 10 percent of the income in the world and own less than 1 percent of the land worldwide. No experts seem to dispute these facts. However, there is much controversy about whether or not these factors cause women to be unhappy.

In an article recently published online by Hugo Schwyzer, Pasadena Community College history and gender studies professor, he emphasized a couple of factors not usually reiterated by those analyzing the unhappiness of women. First, Schwyer suggested that men underreport their unhappiness. They feel that reporting their unhappiness to a researcher who is a stranger would be a sign of weakness. Men tend to interpret unhappiness as a sign of failure, an inability to handle the tough realities of the real world. Thus, male research is skewed toward happiness because of the absence of truthful reporting by men who are unhappy.

Schwyzer's second point about the unhappiness of women is related to dual marital roles. He believes that men have been much slower to assume additional responsibilies in the home compared with women's willingness to work in outside jobs. Consequently, women tend to be more overloaded with responsibilities than men.

Not all researchers agree on this latter point. There is much controversial interpretation about whether women are really overloaded compared to men and, if so, if these factors conspire to produce unhappiness in women. There are other theories attributing causation to women's unhappiness.

Psychiatrist Harry Croft makes the point that the norm for the body image for women in this culture is dissatisfaction with physical appearance. Women's preoccupation with the search for the perfect body has led to the excessive marketing of everything from hair products to cosmetic surgery to dieting fads.

The obsession with dieting, according to Croft, is closely related to the unattainable goal of the perfect body for women. The etistogy of eating disorders such as anorexia nervosa and bulimia is also related to the impossibility of attaining the perfect body.

An interesting current development in the United States is the preponderance of obesity among both men and women. The occurrence of obesity sharply conflicts with the cultural values that support the expectation of the perfect female body.

There are two concepts related to expectations of women that may contribute to their increasing unhappiness. Muslin columnist Anjum Niaz points out that, as time goes by, the pressure on women increases. As women age, their responsibilities increase and the time available to meet their own needs decreases.

Thus, women find themselves on a treadmill that keeps running faster and faster. One way that Niaz points out that women can decrease stress is to reject materialism. Refusing to follow that value system relieves the pressure of indebtedness due to overspending on everything from clothes to cars and boats.

Web designer and entrepreneur Brad Bollenbach writes his advice for men in order to be happy in relationships with women. However, his advice applies to women as well, and is the second significant concept related to expectations. He believes that the most common cause of unhappiness in relationships is false expectations. He defines false expectations as seeing other people the way you want them to be, rather than viewing them as they are.

The consequences of clinging to false and unrealistic expectations can be disappointments, anger, bitterness and resentment. Expecting the other person to change and expecting oneself to be able to change the other person are two of the most destructive and fruitless dynamics in unhappy close relationships.

* Next week's column will discuss the relationship between depression and unhappiness in women.

Judy Caprez is associate professor and director of social work at Fort Hays State University. Send your questions in care of the department of sociology and social work, Rarick Hall, FHSU.