It’s been a rough few years for the U.S. economy. Covid-19 shuttered small businesses, disrupted supply chains and threatened the livelihoods of the most vulnerable, and Americans have had to grapple with higher prices. Now, inflation is falling and unemployment is low, but bruised consumers remain pessimistic. Experts are trying to understand exactly why the vibes are so off.
There are good reasons for optimism for better times ahead, and I want to pause to focus on one of these: In the realm of economics, 2023 was the Year of Women. Across fields and in uniquely female ways, women drove both economic growth and our understanding of it. Consider this list — by no means complete — of 2023 trailblazers:
Swift is such an unstoppable force she’s been cited in the Federal Reserve’s “Beige Book” as a boost to regional economic activity when she performs. World leaders beg her for a tour stop. Her Eras Tour has added nearly $6 billion to the U.S. economy and is certain to wind up the highest-grossing tour of all time by far, making Swift a billionaire and — most important — delivering priceless joy to a legion of Swifties.
And I can report this from personal experience: When Swift performs, the ground literally shakes.
Metaphorically, too, because Swift has shifted the economic plate tectonics of the entertainment industry. When Ticketmaster flubbed the sales of Eras concert tickets, an angry Taylor — locking arms with her fans — demanded change. Propelled in part by this Swift-mentum, the problem of pernicious “junk fees” skyrocketed up the Biden administration’s economic agenda. Now, prices (and not just for tickets!) are more transparent to consumers when they shop.
In her song “The Man,” Swift laments that she’s “so sick of running as fast as I can, wondering if I’d get there quicker if I was a man.” She probably could have. But, by turning the trials of womanhood into a multibillion-dollar empire, Swift shows that female experience is a force that can’t be overlooked and, indeed, should be celebrated — ideally alongside thousands of screaming fans festooned with friendship bracelets.
Goldin was one of my graduate-school advisers, so I’d be keen to celebrate her any year. But 2023, the year she became the first woman to win the Nobel Prize in economics as a solo recipient, was something special.
Before Goldin, economists were not much interested in so-called women’s issues — which is not so surprising, considering there were pretty much no female economists. When Goldin earned her PhD in 1972 at the University of Chicago, women made up less than 3 percent of professors in the field. In 1989 — almost two decades later — Harvard made Goldin the first tenured female member of its economics faculty.
All that trailblazing positioned Goldin to see things that previous economists had missed. Much of her work grew out of a core insight: As the profession became interested in the economics of the family in the 1970s, a fairly central role was absent from its analysis — wives and mothers.
So Goldin wrote that story in a series of papers and a seminal 1990 book, “Understanding the Gender Gap.” Her research demonstrated the complex ways in which norms and expectations, social progress and preferences affect how women participate in labor markets. More recently, she focused on the importance of flexible workplaces as key to the “grand convergence” needed to put women and men on more equal playing fields in the labor market.
As we transition out of the covid economy, Goldin’s work teaches that a silver lining might be an increase in exactly the type of flexibility needed to move us closer to gender equity.
Yes, Barbie is a fictional woman, but she was dreamed up by a real one. In 1959, Ruth Handler created the plastic icon with a small waist, high-heels and (as we all know) quite the bust. Barbie fell out of style in recent decades, and the company that introduced her to our toy shelves, Mattel, neared bankruptcy. But in 2023, she made a comeback as the protagonist of the highest-grossing film of the year, which earned $1.4 billion globally.
Powered by more remarkable real-life women — director Greta Gerwig and actress Margot Robbie — “Barbie” rewrote the Barbie script. Over the decades, the doll has endured a host of criticism, including that her unrealistic proportions fueled a body-image crises in generations of girls. The film embraced and celebrated all of Barbie’s messiness, but also her strength — where else could young girls look to see themselves as astronauts and Supreme Court justices? And its syrupy sweetness brought hordes of pink-bedecked women (and men!) into revenue-starved theaters.
The brilliance of “Barbie” was in the way it leveraged the iconic brand but turned it into something more — a testament to women who contend with a host of unrealistic expectations, stumble and persevere against the patriarchy (which, it turns out, wasn’t just about horses).
More disclosure: Yellen was my boss at the Treasury Department. But she would be on anyone’s list of the women who made an economic mark in 2023.
When Yellen graduated from Yale in 1971, department business was conducted at a private club that didn’t even let women in the doors. She merely went on to become the first person to hold the three most prestigious economic policy jobs in the government: treasury secretary (her current gig), chair of the Federal Reserve and chair of the Council of Economic Advisers.
At Treasury, she has been one of the steadiest hands in President Biden’s steady-handed Cabinet, doing the hard work of implementing complex policy to improve governance and lives. Her department is charged with carrying out key aspects of the Inflation Reduction Act’s clean-energy provisions. She has worked with the IRS to secure much-needed funding to help it dramatically improve service to taxpayers. And she’s been a strong messenger for U.S. economic interests abroad (where she is such an icon that her dinner orders make news), including a critical sojourn this past summer to China that focused on how the two countries can productively move forward in an increasingly interconnected world.
Beyoncé’s first stadium tour was more than 20 years ago. In the years since, she has proved her staying power and then some. She spent much of 2023 starring in her Renaissance World Tour, which is projected to add $4.5 billion to the economy. Her economic impact has been dubbed the “Beyoncé bump,” with her fans flocking particularly to Black-, women- and LGBTQ-owned businesses.
Renaissance is camp — and pure fun. Queen Bey asked her fans to show up in silver, and so they do, literally mirroring each other’s joy. A 42-year-old mother of three, the superstar is also (subtly) sharing lessons about work, motherhood and strength. She does more than balance her roles, she blends them: This is her first tour since the birth of her twins, Rumi and Sir, and her stage is shared proudly with 11-year-old daughter Blue Ivy, who has in the past been the target of online harassment. Some might be driven out of the public eye in face of such abuse. But Beyoncé and Blue Ivy are having none of that.
Like Swift, Beyoncé released a concert film that is already on track to be one of the highest-grossing films of the year despite a December release. But rejecting the inevitable competition narrative, the two attended each other’s premieres. Here, too, these superstars altered the mechanics of the industry: Rather than a major studio distributing their films, they cut out the middleman, produced them themselves and are distributing them through AMC, a theater company, rather than a traditional studio. That new model, powered by a recent shift in antitrust law, is another example of these female artists exerting their power to control their art, and its profits.
Barra is one month away from her 10-year anniversary at the helm of General Motors, and her decennial has been bumpy. She has earned plaudits for a growth strategy focused on bringing the automaker into the future by investing in electric vehicles and driverless tech. But that strategy has run into some roadblocks.
Fewer consumers are embracing electric cars than were expected when Barra announced that GM would go “all electric by 2035,” and the company has poured billions into a fleet of driverless cars that were pulled off San Francisco’s streets after a pedestrian collision. Add to that difficult labor negotiations with the United Auto Workers, who ultimately secured their largest compensation gain in recent history but not before negotiations noisily came to a head this fall.
So why include Barra on this year’s list? Because setbacks reveal character in leadership.
Barra is the first woman to lead a U.S. automobile manufacturer. She is steeped in tradition — she began her career at GM as an 18-year-old — but does not let it bind her to the past. She remains committed to innovation and the transition to a greener, cleaner economy. As her trajectory this year illustrates, that transition will be imperfect. But it is essential, and it takes fortitude to do what must be done.
This past summer, Spain won the Women’s World Cup. But the battle for that victory paled compared with the players’ fight off the field to address a hostile environment created by coaches who denigrated them and an umbrella organization unwilling to make investments critical to their success.
Indeed, last year, many of the country’s most promising players asked not to be called up to the national team until the situation was remedied. The Spanish football federation resisted change, but some players reached an uneasy truce. But then, se acabó. (That’s the hashtag for the team’s movement — it translates to “it’s over”).
When the federation’s then-president, Luis Rubiales, forcibly kissed forward Jenni Hermoso after the team’s World Cup victory, the players resigned en masse, Rubiales was forced out and manager Jorge Vilda was fired. Since then, the women have continued to push for reforms, including advancements on equal pay. As a symbol of the shift they’ve achieved, the term “women’s soccer” has been removed from the team’s name. Soccer is soccer, no matter who plays it.
While we celebrate their accomplishments on and off the field, it’s easy to forget the sacrifices made to get to this point. Of the 15 women who last fall demanded change, just three competed in the World Cup. The rest gave up on the dream of representing their country on the world’s biggest stage — and the glory of winning!
This World Cup, and all that has followed, is also their triumph. And if you’re a woman who’s ever waged a similar fight, consider it — and the all progress of this year — your victory, too.
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