Today's women may be unhappy (at least, that's the claim), but Buckingham must be pretty psyched — in addition to his Huffington Post column, he's got a book excerpt, a panel discussion, a top ten list, and a video clip up on Business Week's website. Here's the video:

Buckingham may be a leeetle smarmy, but he's not horrible — he doesn't think women belong in the home, nor is he one of those people who think feminism causes unhappiness (a position Judith Warner handily attacks on her NY Times blog today). He does think women are kinda miserable — as evidence he cites not just the popular Stevenson and Wolfers study, but also the nifty-sounding "Eurobarometer analysis." But the solution isn't a return to some notional age of pregnancy and pie-baking — we just have to work smarter!

According to the video, the happiest women are those who don't multitask or "juggle," because "if your entire life is spent as a juggler, you never really get to hold onto any moment long enough to feel it." I decided to multitask a little by actually juggling during the video, and I think it made me a little bit happier, but then "spending your entire life as a juggler" actually sounds pretty sweet to me, so maybe I'm not Buckingham's target audience (note to the at-home juggler: I like to use balled-up socks). If I really want to be happy, says Buckingham, I need to stop doing so many things at once.

It's a message echoed over and over again in his writing, and in his interviews with professional women. Over at HuffPo, Buckingham quotes Billie Williamson, senior partner at Ernst & Young, who proudly admits that she doesn't arrange photos of her daughter in scrapbooks. She's also "the queen of outsourcing." Buckingham writes,

House cleaning, grocery shopping, kid's birthday parties, all outsourced. You can't do everything, so don't fall into the trap of trying. Instead, find the moments in each aspect of your life that invigorate you, and imbalance your life toward those.

So one key to happiness is having servants. Another is not letting your digressive ladybrain get in the way. At BusinessWeek, Susan Peters, chief learning officer at General Electric, says to Buckingham,

I know you've all done this, where you're writing the list of what you have to get done for Thanksgiving dinner while the colleague next to you is making the big presentation. You have to discipline your mind to stay where you are and stay in the moment. I would argue that our male colleagues are in the moment, and if we're not, that's a huge disadvantage.

Men don't think about dinner when they're busy with affairs of state, and neither should you. Just outsource it. Of course, some things, like pregnancy, are harder to outsource. So just put off thinking about them for as long as possible. At HuffPo, Buckingham paraphrases Facebook COO Sheryl Sandberg:

Time and again she has seen highly talented women turn down challenging career assignments because they are thinking about having a baby. Not that they actually have a baby. They aren't even pregnant. It's merely that they are thinking about it. And this thinking turns to planning, and the planning leads them to the conclusion that now isn't a good time to take on anything new. Sheryl's advice: Enough with your planning. You are on a fast career track right now, doing as much and earning as much and wanting as much as your colleagues, so stay on this track for as long as you can, and wait to see what unfolds.

Buckingham's basic thesis seems to be that women sabotage themselves by thinking about too much stuff, and if they could just think about less — perhaps by paying other people to do it for them — they'd be happier. His advice isn't stupid — if you're a successful middle-class woman. There is something empowering about refusing to manage a whole bunch of household crap, especially if you can afford to get someone else to take care of it. And it's probably true that women with the luxury of maintaining laserlike focus enjoy their jobs more. But not all women have what Buckingham calls "an excess of choice" of things to pay attention to. Plenty of women have lots of obligations and little help or money, and "quit juggling" isn't particularly good advice for them.

There's really a bigger problem at work in Buckingham's advice, one Barbara Ehrenreich hints at in Bright-Sided. She says that making people feel artificially happy about their circumstances discourages them from trying to change them. Similarly, telling women that the way to get happy is to change their individual thought processes ignores the idea of collective action. Judith Warner is as skeptical about women's large-scale unhappiness as I am, but she does identify some major problems:

The wage gap persists, particularly for mothers, who now earn 73 cents for every man's dollar. Our workforce and education system is still sex-segregated, operating along generations-old stereotypes that steer most women into low-paid, low-status, low-security professions. Women pay more for health insurance than men, have more extensive health needs than men, and suffer unique forms of discrimination in their coverage. (Women may be denied coverage because they had a Caesarean delivery or were victims of domestic violence - both "preexisting conditions.") Regardless of the number of hours they work, they continue to do far more caretaking and housekeeping work at home than do their husbands. And discrimination against mothers (but not fathers) in the workplace is all but ubiquitous.

Women aren't going to solve any of these problems by saying "in the moment" or by putting off thinking about kids as long as possible. In fact, these techniques actually make systemic change less likely, because (again, as Ehrenreich says about positive thinking) they make it seem like any woman who isn't happy is just doing something wrong. It's revealing that Buckingham lists the wage gap as one of his top ten "myths about the lives of women:"

The oft-quoted 77¢ on the dollar figure is accurate. But almost all of the gap is caused by different levels of experience. Women interrupt their careers and that leads to being perceived as having less experience.

Buckingham may not believe in the wage gap, or in other social problems keeping women from achieving parity. But those of us who do see the large-scale social ills Warner enumerates understand that we're not going to fix them by looking inward at our own brains. We need to turn outward, and join forces with other women, women whose troubles are bigger than not having the time to scrapbook. Ehrenreich said it well: "the threats we face are real and can be vanquished only by shaking off self-absorption and taking action in the world." Even if it involves a little juggling.

How Women Handle Success [BusinessWeek]
Words Of Wisdom From Strong Women [Huffington Post]
When We're Equal, We'll Be Happy [NYT]
Ten Myths About The Lives Of Women [BusinessWeek]
Why Are Women Unhappier Than They Were 40 Years Ago? [BusinessWeek]
Marcus Buckingham On Strong Women [BusinessWeek]

As the blogger behind the fantastic Echidne Of The Snakes writes: "This piece sounds to me like yet another in that long series the Times has: What Is Wrong With Working Women? These stories always create or magnify a problem and then offer anecdotal evidence on how awful the problem is." She continues:

To get to that point, the present article quickly slides by the facts: Men are more often bullies than women and if you work a little on those percentages you will find that male-on-female (heh) bullying is a larger percentage than female-on-female bullying. But never mind, we shall write about the latter!

Please note: The most recent Times story is based on a survey by the Workplace Bullying Institute (?!?), which was also the source of the January article. And the "expert," Peggy Klaus, interviewed in Saturday's piece, wrote the Sisterhood Of Workplace Infighting story in January. And! In March 2008, the Times did a story called "When the Bully Sits in the Next Cubicle."

Obviously, if there are women in the workplace, and there is bullying in the workplace, then from time to time, there are going to be women bullying women at work. But what is the motivation behind running panicky stories about ladies misbehaving at the office? Echidne notes:

If female bullies mainly attack other women because women are seen as easier targets, could it be that the same motivation underlies articles like this one? Attacking the Big Boys With The Moneybags is scary, as those moneybags make excellent defensive weapons.

There's no telling why the Times needed two bullying stories within five months, but in an economic downturn, doesn't focusing on the bitchiness and cattiness of ladies in cubicles seem rather cruel? Bully behavior, even?

Backlash: Women Bullying Women At Work [NY Times]
The Bully Boys Gals [Echidne Of The Snakes]

Earlier: Bullied At Work? Chances Are, The Abuser Is Another Woman
Bullies Are As Common In The Cubicle As The Classroom

The behavior? Verbal abuse, job sabotage, misuse of authority and destroying of relationships. Explains Klaus: "While women have come a long way in removing workplace barriers, one of the last remaining obstacles is how they treat one another. Instead of helping to build one another’s careers, they sometimes derail them — for example, by limiting access to important meetings and committees; withholding information, assignments and promotions; or blocking the way to mentors and higher-ups." And yet, writes Klaus:

Despite all the money spent annually on women’s leadership conferences and professional development programs, you’d be hard-pressed to find a workshop on women mistreating one another at work. Don’t get me wrong: I’m a huge proponent of women’s leadership programs. But teaching career skills is not enough if we ignore one of the most important reasons for holding these events in the first place: learning to value one another so we can all get ahead.

It's also interesting that recent research shows that girls who are bullied at a young age are more likely to remain victims than boys. In other words, if you're getting beaten up at age six, you're probably going to be teased and verbally threatened at age ten. What are the chances some of this stays with you when you're 22, or 32?

Of course, you'd think that if there are multitudes of women out there who have experienced sabotage and abuse, there would be a a horde of women willing to speak out against bullies in the workplace. Except that means admitting a woman mistreated you, Klaus explains. "We fear that bringing our experience into the light and talking about it will set us back to that ugly gender stereotype we have fought so hard to overcome: the one about the overemotional, backstabbing, aggressive (and you know what’s coming) bitch."

So what's the answer? A push for females to be kinder and gentler in the workplace? Or a course called Dealing With Bitches 101?

A Sisterhood of Workplace Infighting [NY Times]
Girls Twice As Likely As Boys To Remain Victims Of Bullying [EurekAlert]

• The crew on Madonna's world tour is threatening to quit because they had to stay at a cheap airport hotel while she stayed in an £11,000-a-night castle. It cannot be confirmed whether or not Her Madgesty said, "Let them eat cake." [Mirror, WOW Report]
• Here's the latest on David Duchovny: He may have had an addiction to online porn. And he may have released a statement about it because he was already in treatment and a fellow patient was about to sell info to the tabloids. [Fox News]
• Looking back at old interviews, Duchovny revealed his love of porn and '80s porn stars. [People]
• Meanwhile, Tea Leoni has canceled her appearance at the Toronto Film Festival. [People]
• Lindsay Lohan hung out with Sam Ronson instead of going to her grandfather's wake on Long Island. [The Sun]
• Lindsay signed a MySpace message "This song is for SR… ILY." Translation: "This song is for Sam Ronson. I love you." [Pop Dirt]
• Are Queen Latifah and her long time partner Jeanette Jenkins planning on adopting? Are they out now? [ONTD]

• Some dude's been arrested for stealing a digital camera that had pictures of Kate Middleton and Prince William vacationing in Mustique together. The camera belonged to Kate's little sister Pippa and the guy intended to sell the snaps to the tabloids, obvs. [Daily Mail]
• Kevin Spacey: Seen pinching the bare bottom of some dude. [Mr. Paparazzi, via Perez Hilton]
• Says a witness: "Kevin looked like he was having a brilliant time." [The Sun]
• Elisabeth Hasselbeck of The View is heading to the Republican National Convention on Thursday. She'll fly in and out on the same day. "I must really want John McCain elected," she says, "because I would not get on a plane like that for anyone else." Oh, the sacrifice! Thank God McCain has you. [NY Daily News]
• The apocalypse is nigh: Heidi Montag and Spencer Pratt are opening a bar. In NEW YORK. To be called The Hill. [W]
• Save Katie! The anti-Scientology group Anonymous will be protesting at opening night of Katie Holmes' Broadway debut in All My Sons. "We aren’t looking to shut it down, we just want to prove a point," says a spokesperson. [MSNBC]
• Josh Hartnett and and unnamed female friend went into a little-used library at a SoHo hotel and started getting "hot and heavy." Since the hotel — and the library — are under security camera surveillance, the staff saw a little show on a monitor. No video link, sorry! [MSNBC]
• Michael Phelps shot a cameo for the new season of Entourage. "It was like being in New York City with one of the Beatles," Kevin "E" Connolly says. "People were stopping in the streets and climbing up things to see him. They were going nuts. He's like a superstar." [Yahoo News]
• Meanwhile, Michael Phelps is totally not talking about the ladies and doing his best to have some privacy: "I never said I have a girlfriend, and I never said I don't have a girlfriend," he says. [People]
• DNA evidence has linked an air conditioning repairman to the 2001 stabbing death of Ashley Ellerin, Ashton Kutcher's former girlfriend. [Yahoo News]
• Johnny Depp was on stage with his old band! One night only! He played guitar and sang backup! It was for charity. [Yahoo News]
• This was probably inevitable but still: Oy: Agyness Deyn is working on a Hollywood career. [Daily Mail]
• Not that you asked, but Britney has been working out "super hard" and is in "great shape." [Page Six]
• Angelina Jolie would like to work on a European film. "No one has asked me yet," she says. "When I can really speak it, maybe I'll try out for a French film in a few years." [Breitbart]
• Sienna Miller and Balthazar Getty: Moving in together? They looked at a $22 million mansion in Malibu and Sienna liked it. (At that price point, what's not to like?) [Perez Hilton]
• Maroon 5's Adam Levine: Seen hitting on newly single Anne Hathaway at the Vanity Fair DNC party. Uh-oh, isn't Adam on that herpes chart? [Fox News]
• James Gandolfini, 46, married his fiancée Deborah Lin, 40, in her hometown of Honolulu, Hawaii on Saturday. "They both wore long, green leis around their necks," says a source. "There were lots of white flowers on the tables and Gandolfini was beaming." [People]
• French actress Emmanuelle Beart and director Fabrice Du Welz are defending their latest movie, Vinyan, in which Beart stars as a mother who loses her son to the 2004 tsunami but refuses to believe he is dead. The character and her husband go looking for the kid in the jungle of the Thai-Myanmar border and stumble across a terrifying world ruled by savage children. It's a horror film, but the director says, "I tried to be as respectful as I can. I don't want to be unpleasant to people who have really suffered from the tsunami." [Yahoo News]
• John Mayer got really drunk and partied with a blonde cocktail waitress on the last night of his world tour. On stage, he mentioned reading The Secret and said "I had a conversation recently, and a lot of tears were exchanged." Jen Aniston, sniff, sniff. [People]
• This is just coming out now, but apparently Amy Winehouse overdosed twice last year: Once in July, from smoking hash for 36 hours; next in August from cocaine, heroin, ecstasy, ketamine and crystal meth. Now she might have brain damage or schizophrenia from the drugs. [The Sun]
• Another "Amy Winehouse may have brain damage" story. [Daily Mail]
• Headline of the day: "Could Scarlett Be The Next Spielberg?" Yes, Ms. Johansson wants to direct. [Daily Express]
• Mel Gibson has become "close to" a "glamorous Russian musician" on the set on his new movie but he says she's just a colleague and he remains happily married. [Daily Mail]
• The stage musical version of 9 To 5 features 19 new Dolly Parton songs. "She's so lovely and so humble," producer Robert Greenblatt says. "She says, 'I'm not sure I'll get you the whole way there, but I'd love to give it a try. If something doesn't work exactly, I'll rewrite it.'" [Variety]
• Colin Farrell saved this homeless guy's life by giving him cash and telling him: "You need to get your life together, man, promise me. And make sure you go see my new movie." [Toronto Sun]
• Jude Law is visiting Afghanistan to promote peace. Yeah, I dunno. [AP]
• Sign of the recession? Diddy had to give up his private jet. [The Star]
• Natalie Portman won a humanity award at the Venice Film Festival, where she made her directorial debut with a short film called Eve. [The Star]
• Duran Duran fan? Maybe you wanna read about how cocaine destroyed the band. Written by Andy Taylor! [Daily Mail]
• Sixty-two year old Cher has a 36 year old man and she hired a private jet to fly him and two of his buddies to Memphis to catch a Merle Haggard show, which is kind of awesome. [Page Six]
• Michelle Williams and Spike Jonze: Still on. [Page Six]
• Leanne Rimes, 26, has been married for seven years, and says she is ready for a baby. [People]
• "You are bugging the fuck out… No disrespect. …Alaska? I don't even know if there's any black people in Alaska. If you really think we're gonna let you win the election with these crazy decisions that you're making, you're bugging." —Diddy's thoughts about Sarah Palin in a video directed to John McCain. [Perez Hilton]
• Jerry O'Connell says pregnant wife Rebecca Romjin craves lemonade and soy cream cheese. "Can't be cream cheese. Soy cream cheese. Do you know how difficult it is to find soy cream cheese? It's usually in the corner of the supermarket someplace!" [People]
• "The easiest sex scene I have done was in Mulholland Drive because it was with another woman. There was no awkwardness. There was no sexual tension." — Naomi Watts. [Sydney Morning Herald]
• "When it comes to fashion, I know about as much as Betty. I love to play dress-up and it’s fun, but I’m not interested in the fashion world. If I wasn’t an actress, I’d probably want to be a teacher." — America Ferrera. [Mirror]
• "I always knew I was never the prettiest or ugliest girl in the room. Life's too short to inject botulism into you face to get rid of a tiny line because you've laughed too much. I don't feel a need to lose weight, because I'm not 21. I'm happy with my package." — Ashley Jensen, aka Christina on Ugly Betty. [Daily Mail]
• "It's very strange to be here in London without Anthony Minghella, whom I loved very much, and very painful. I was so frightened in the first week of shooting The English Patient, I was trembling, but he was trying to find a way to win my trust, and he just said to me, 'Well, fly...' and I did and it changed my life." — Juliette Binoche. [Independent]
• "Victoria and I are very different. People bracket us together because we live in the same city and we’re both interested in fashion. Victoria’s fashion line has been very successful and, hopefully mine will be too. But that’s where the similarities begin and end." —Melanie "Scary Spice" Brown. Not that you knew she had a fashion line. [Daily Mail]
• "The only thing I can cook really is mince meat, which is ironic because I'm a vegetarian. But I like calzone and lasagne. I cooked every day in Spain so David and the boys lived off minced meat for four years. I cook a Sunday dinner every single Sunday I'll have you know. My kids like Yorkshire pudding so I make that, I can make it from scratch and I make Dora the Explorer cakes for afters because the kids love them." — Victoria "Posh Spice" Beckham. [Daily Mail]
• "I can't even think about having another baby right now. The boys take up so much of my time." — Victoria Beckham. [Mirror]
• "I don't care for [romantic comedies] where the guy is emasculated, tossed around by the woman, and lacking a point of view. It's a disservice to both the male and the female. I like to give my guys some balls" - Matthew McConaughey to Plenty magazine. [Page Six]
• "I kind of want to see how the audience responds first. I don't want to overstay my welcome." — Shannen Doherty, on whether she will stick with the new 90210. [LA Times]
• "I informed British Airways of my late arrival. I told them I was a kind of minor celebrity and I might get a bit of hassle at the airport. Turns out they are complete arseholes. Even when I fell over and badly creased my hat, I had no assistance. I was crying but I didn't want them to see. A cynic might say I missed the plane, an honest man might say I went to the airport a little late." —Pete Doherty. [Mirror]
• "I think manipulation is something that women do a lot, it's still our number one problem. You look at those characters [in The Duchess] — Georgiana and Bess — and they're hugely trying to outmanoeuvre each other, but I think it's also possible for intense love affairs to happen between women — not necessarily sexual, but things can obviously take a sexual turn. Women do get obsessed with other women — whether they love them or hate them, and I think that line is very easy to cross." — Keira Knightley [Guardian]

Phibbs thinks she is. But first off, what exactly constitutes a feminist icon? Surely, it's a title that is bestowed upon a person, rather than sought out. And it probably has less to do with what the icon has actually done, and more to do with what it meant for and how it affected the fan.

For me, Dolly Parton is totally a feminist icon. But not for "9 to 5." Instead, it was "Just Because I'm a Woman," a song about fighting sexual double standards that — released in 1968 — was far ahead of it's time.

I can see you’re disappointed
By the way you look at me
And I’m sorry that I’m not
The woman you thought I’d be
Yes, I’ve made my mistakes
But listen and understand
My mistakes are no worse than yours
Just because I’m a woman

So when you look at me
Don’t feel sorry for yourself
Just think of all the shame
You might have brought somebody else

Just let me tell you this
Then we’ll both know where we stand
My mistakes are no worse than yours
Just because I’m a woman

Now a man will take a good girl
And he’ll ruin her reputation
But when he wants to marry
Well, that’s a different situation

He’ll just walk off and leave her
To do the best she can
While he looks for an angel
To wear his wedding band

Now I know that I’m no angel
If that’s what you thought you’d found
I was just the victum of
A man that let me down

Yes, I’ve made my mistakes
But listen and understand
My mistakes are no worse than yours
Just because I’m a woman

No, my mistakes are no worse than yours
Just because I’m a woman

Dolly Parton: Feminist Icon? [The Guardian]

Of bringing son Thurston to the office, Zoe Williams explains that she wasn't able to search online for something important up because "I am using my Google hand to prop up this baby." Rice cakes get smooshed into keyboards, babies start yodeling in meetings, and everything takes three times longer than it would normally.

It makes sense that in the U.S., where women on the whole do not get paid maternity leave, new parents would be looking for creative solutions to the working mother conundrum, though bringing mewling, puking newborns to the office doesn't really seem like much of a solution for anyone involved.

Bringing In Baby [Guardian]
Bringing Babies To Work

Earlier: Discrimination Complaints By Pregnant Women Are On The Rise

The Journal breaks pregnant women's rights down thusly: Employers can fire, lay off and refuse to hire knocked up ladies, but they have to provide ample proof that they held men to the same standards. They also have to provide maternity leave, as they would provide leave for any other medical issue, but in 48 of the 50 states, that leave doesn't have to be paid (readers in California and Washington State, you're the lucky ones).

And then, many women have to deal with blowhard employers like Sir Alan Sugar, the CEO-star of the British version of the Apprentice, who told the Times of London that, "Companies have no divine duty to help with childcare. Companies employ people. It's the Government's responsibility to provide childcare. You pay a person a salary and they cut their cloth accordingly." Sugar also added that female bosses are more likely to discriminate against female employees, because they are "more ruthless than men. They are more conscious of not employing other women because they feel they're not going to get the value of work out of them."

In Linda Hirshman's infamous American Prospect article about the "opt-out revolution," she suggests that if women want real equality, they must major in (mostly non-liberal arts) subjects that prepare them for the job market , make money, as money is "the marker of success in a market economy," and marry a man with bleak economic prospects, as he will be more likely to stay home with the babies. It's not that I don't agree with Hirshman — I think she's pretty much on the money — but I personally don't want to do any of those things, even though I acknowledge that I'm not helping feminism by being an English major who works in a low-rent field. Many self-proclaimed feminists feel the same way, so would it be more useful to organize and change the pregnancy laws instead of berating ourselves for making the choices that Silda, and so many of the rest of us, might one day make?

Why Stand By? [New York Magazine]
More Women Pursue Claims Of Pregnancy Discrimination [WSJ]
Women Bosses Are More Likely To Discriminate Against Mothers, Says Sir Alan Sugar [Times of London]