Are international happiness rankings reliable?
with Professor Christopher Barrington-Leigh
Thursday, November 13th, 2025, from 12:00-1:00 pm
Location: 2001 McGill College Avenue, Room 1140; zoom
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Global comparisons of wellbeing increasingly rely on survey questions that ask respondents to evaluate their lives, most commonly in the form of “life satisfaction” and “Cantril ladder” items. These measures underpin international rankings such as the World Happiness Report and inform policy initiatives worldwide, yet their comparability has not been established with contemporary global data. Using the Gallup World Poll, Global Flourishing Study, and World Values Survey, I show that the two question formats yield divergent distributions, rankings, and response patterns that vary across countries and surveys, defying simple explanations. To explore differences in respondents’ cognitive interpretations, I compare regression coefficients from the Global Flourishing Study, analyzing how each question wording relates to life circumstances. While international rankings of wellbeing are unstable, the study of the determinants of life evaluations appears more robust. Together, the findings underscore the need for a renewed research agenda on critical limitations to cross-country comparability of wellbeing.
Feminist Epistemology, Research & Activism
October 9th 1:30-2:25pm
Location : 2001 McGill College 11th floor room 1140
This presentation explores feminist epistemology, research, and activism through the lens of abortion access. Feminist epistemology critiques traditional science for privileging male perspectives while excluding women from knowledge production. By emphasizing situated knowledge and “strong objectivity” (Harding), feminist approaches highlight how values, power, and social locations shape what counts as valid knowledge.
Abortion pills are a site of contested knowledge. Their history reveals tensions between science, politics, morality, and activist movements. The case of misoprostol in Brazil illustrates how communities reinterpret medical knowledge, showing alternative ways of knowledge creation.
Women on Web, one of the first online abortion services, has combined medical expertise, feminist values, and digital tools to support safe at-home abortions globally for two decades. Its activism and research have promoted the acceptance telemedicine abortion and helped push legal reforms. At the same time, Latin America’s self-managed abortion (SMA) movement has pioneered community-based knowledge on medication abortion and the demedicalization of abortion through feminist networks, and SMA models of care such as acompañamiento. Activists have pushed for, participated in, and conducted research to create the evidence needed to influence
medical guidelines and regulations.
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