Why are educated women so unhappy with their marriage?

More than 20,000 housewives in India committed suicide in 2014 compared to 5,650 by farmers, nearly 4 times as many, and yet this does not receive any coverage in the media, as do farmers. The surprise is that female activists, who get extremely agitated about access to Hindu temples or the building of dams for irrigation, show no interest in why their sisters are killing themselves. It has been left to foreigners to research the causes of housewife suicides in India. A study in The Lancet in 2012 found that in women older than 15 years of age the rate of suicides in India is 2.5 times that in high-income countries. In western societies "marriage confers protection from suicide to married women". So, why is marriage killing our young women? " We found that female literacy, the level of exposure to the media and smaller family size, were correlated with higher suicide rates," said one researcher. Counterintuitively, women in traditional large families, which probably means rural, have much lower suicide rates. A glib answer is to blame dowries, but dowries are more prevalent in traditional families. It cannot be strained relations with in laws because an educated, working woman is likely to "forge a strong alliance with her husband and persuade him to break off from his parents and set up a nuclear family on their own". Is it because of unfulfilled expectations? In villages most women would eat the same kind of food, wear the same kind of clothes and do a lot of physical work, looking after their families, looking after dairy cattle and helping out in the fields. In cities, standards of wealth, and hence standards of living, vary enormously. Expenses are much higher and jobs maybe very stressful. A 5 year study in the US showed that 82% of wealthy are happy while 98% of poor are unhappy, 87% of wealthy are happy in their marriage while 53% of poor are unhappy, 93% of wealthy liked their work while 85% of the poor did not and 0% wealthy were unhappy with their finances while 98% of the poor were. A civil servant writes that happiness is of 2 types, positive and negative. Positive happiness comes from acquisition and is therefore never satisfied while negative happiness comes from absence of unhappiness, which means an inner peace. Our negative happiness is spoiled by an oppressive state which imposes unjustified restrictions on our lives, like the odd-even rule of driving in Delhi. A book Sex and the Single Girl, published in 1962 promised women that they can 'have it all' but a woman writes that it has made women slaves to their work and to their bodies and provided free sex to men, without the commitment of marriage. Is the rising incidence of abortions in Indian cities a hint of why our young women are unable to bear it any more? We need to ask.