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Misty L. Heggeness, "Swiftynomics: How Women Mastermind and Redefine Our Economy" (U California Press, 2026)
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- [00:00]
A
This episode is brought to you by Avid tv. Where do savvy minds go to find masterful documentaries and hard to find films from across the globe? Try a free month long trial at Ovid and go beyond the mainstream. Indiewire says Ovid is unafraid to program films that matter. And the New York Times calls Ovid a terrific streamer for independent film fans. A boutique hand curated streaming service. Yet now with over 2,400 titles, Ovid is the home to films by auteurs from Chantal Akerman to Chris Marker to Wang Bing and has the richest collection of probing, avant garde and provocative films anywhere. Ovid offers many things except conformity. Try Ovid today and get your first month free. Use promo code N B N O V I D. That's Ovid TV promo code N B N O V I D Hello everybody, this is Marshall Po. I'm the founder and editor of the New Books Network and if you're listening to this, you know that the NBN is the largest academic podcast network in the world. We reach a worldwide audience of 2 million people. You may have a podcast or you may be thinking about starting a podcast. As you probably know, there are challenges basically of two kinds. One is technical. There are things you have to know in order to get your podcast produced and distributed. And the second is, and this is the biggest problem, you need to get an audience. Building an audience in podcasting is the hardest thing to do today. With this in mind, we at the NBM have started a service called NBN Productions. What we do is help you create a podcast, produce your podcast, distribute your podcast and we host your podcast. Most importantly, what we do is we distribute your podcast to the NBN audience. We've done this many times with many academic podcasts and we would like to help you. If you would be interested in talking to us about how we can help you with your podcast, please contact us. Just go to the front page of the New Books Network and you will see a link to NBN Productions. Click that, fill out the form and we can talk. Welcome to the New Books Network.
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B
Welcome back to the New Books Network. My name is Kaylee Tees Harlow and I'm one of your hosts. And in this episode I am excited to speak with Misty L. Hegnes, author of the new book Swiftenomics How Women Mastermind and Redefine Our Economy. Misty is Co Director of the Kansas Population Center, Associate professor of Economics and Public affairs at the University of Kansas, and former principal Economist and Senior advisor at the U.S. census Bureau. She is also creator of the Care Board, a dashboard of economic statistics built by and for caregivers that brings their economic contributions into the fold. Okay, Misty, thanks so much for being here.
- [02:37]
C
Yeah, thanks for having me.
- [02:39]
B
Could we start off with the title of the book? Why did you choose Taylor Swift as the muse for your debut?
- [02:45]
C
Yeah, so the title is Swiftenomics How Women Mastermind and Redefine Our Economy. And the muse is Taylor Swift. And essentially, I started out with Taylor as the muse, mostly because what I was seeing in the data and what I was seeing with how women were behaving in. In society today, in modern society, was very different than what economists and others kind of traditionally like the roles we traditionally assign women. And so I wanted to tell a story with the data, but also about women's economic agency. But I wanted it to be really live in people's minds. And so I decided to focus on Taylor again because she was just such an excellent example of going after her career, of reinventing herself, of masterminding or path forward. And this is really what I see successful women today doing.
- [04:00]
B
Yeah. Is there a moment in Taylor Swift's career, specifically where you thought, like, this isn't just pure fame, but this is more of an economic system? Was it during the hours tour? Was it before?
- [04:13]
C
I would say it was definitely before. So my area of expertise is gender and the economy. Um, and so, you know, I am always looking at how women behave, not just, you know, in society or in places outside of their homes, but also within their homes. And one thing that stood out to me with Taylor is, you know, she's her experience. You know, we can argue that she is a phenomenon, that her experience is way too unique, that it's not relatable to the common human. But I would argue that while that's true, the flip side is also true that she is extremely relatable. It's one of the reasons why she's so successful. The fact that she writes about her own experiences and, you know, her own lived experiences that tend to be very common. Human experiences that are driven by human emotion are one of the things that have propelled her into this fame status. And so I had been watching Taylor ever since. Basically, she put out the music video for the man from her Lover album and just had been continually impressed with the way that she was not letting barriers get in her way and the way that she was crafting her career path around the barriers. And so I'd been watching her since then, and when I decided to write the book, it was just, you know, obvious that she would be a perfect muse in terms of explaining kind of the pathways that women take today.
- [06:03]
B
Yeah. And even in the book, there are other icons that you talk about as well, like Rihanna, Madonna, Dolly Parton and Reese Witherspoon, who have been in the business for a very long time. And a lot of them are also starting to venture out to, like, for example, Rihanna into the makeup world. What is it about their careers that made them essential to this larger conversation and ultimately why you decided to include them in the Swiftenomics concept?
- [06:31]
C
Yeah, I would say another person that I speak about in the book a couple of times is Beyonce as well. And I think that, you know, one of the components that these women or one of the ways in which these women are so interesting and so successful has to do with, again, what. What I just mentioned that Taylor does, which is, you know, if you have a barrier in front of you, you know, you can try to remove it. It's often difficult, and oftentimes it is difficult to go around the barrier, but it. It's also easier. And so I think one of the things that these women do is they don't get stuck. So when. When the industry tells them, you know, you're not good enough to play anything other than a ditzy blonde, or, you know, the industry tells them, you know, this is your genre of music, and we've typecast you as this, and this is where you need to stay. You know, women today aren't kind of putting up with that anymore. They're saying, well, I want to aspire to more. I want to do other things. I want to be a leader. So you see women like Rihanna, who basically, you know, still is in the music industry and extremely famous for her music, but stepped, you know, to the side and started this makeup line and some other sort of businesses that she can lead. Reese Witherspin, you see her stepping into developing her own production company through hello Sunshine. And she started, you know, one of the reasons. And she's on, you know, record for saying this. One of the reasons why she did it was because she felt that women were too typecast by traditional Hollywood executives and that movies that really had meaning and depth and TV and, you know, productions that really had meaning and depth for women were being, you know, declined and not being picked up. And so Rhys, you know, kind of took it into her own hands, if you will, and started her own production company so that she could pick up this type of art, that and TV series and movies that she knew would speak to women and she was very successful in doing that. So it's just. I think it's fun to live in the world today where you see women are basically saying, hey, this movie industry and the consumers that, you know, the traditional Hollywood is. Is focused on aren't consumers that look like me. And I, you know, want to change that. So I'm going to go in and make movies that speak to women. And, you know, the fact that women's educational attainment has increased so much that, you know, overt sexism has gone down in the workplace means that women have money today and they have power and influence because of it. To spend on movies that, you know, move them and speak to them and music that moves them and speaks to them.
- [09:55]
B
Yeah, that's great. I mean, it makes me think about Beyonce's Cowboy Carter album and how controversial it was that she was being nominated in the country music category, even though everyone forgets that she's from Houston, Texas, which is like one of the hearts of country music. And then even with Taylor Swift, you know, teetering between pop culture and country, it reminds me of, you know, just everyday women wanting to change their career paths, like, they don't want to work in this industry anymore. They want to do something else. And it seems like without the fame, it doesn't really matter because people are going to judge you and criticize you anyway for wanting to change or switch into a different avenue.
- [10:39]
C
Yeah. I mean, and in some sense, you could say, at least for, like, the Beyonces of the world, et cetera, that they wanted to stay in that industry, but that they wanted to create music and art that was meaningful for them. And, you know, that didn't jive with what traditional stereotypical music industry executives thought, you know, she should be doing or women should be doing in general. But it is. You know, we did a survey for the book. We interviewed or 300 people and just asked, how many times have you reinvented yourself within your job or career? You know, meaning how many times have you transitioned into, you know, something that's totally different or something that maybe is tangential, but is it directly what you set out to do in your path at the beginning? And the majority of people, I think it was nine. Like 90 or 91% of people in our survey, which is nationally representative, has said that they have transitioned at least once one time within their career. And it's the same for men and women, which was interesting to us because we were expecting that women would have more transitions just because it's harder for women to balance family Life with work life. But where it becomes interesting from a gendered perspective is that women have a higher frequency of reinventions. So men and women, you know, for reinventing at least one time in your career, men, everybody does it. So we need to, like, remove the shame from shifting from, you know, one part, you know, A to B or whatever. But women have a higher frequency of. Of. Of shifting. And, you know, if I were to guess as to why that is, I would say it's most likely a. Because they, you know, experience whatever their. Their profession is as stifling to them because expectations across the board for women are lower than they are for men and. Or they, you know, start building a family and start having children and then the need to kind of rebalance and recalibrate in order to make that dynamic work.
- [13:03]
B
Yeah, that makes a lot of sense. And going back to the Swifties, they've done a really great job of, you know, just buying all the merch, boosting ticket sales, the streaming, like the streaming numbers for Taylor Swift are off the charts. They continuously just. Her songs are always number one. So at a bigger level, Taylor is, you know, boosting local economies from the country all the way down to the city level, especially for this past eras tour. And then she's also done a really good job of talking about, you know, getting people to register to vote, which has been really apparent in the last, you know, last eight years with the current administration. It's been very important for young people to go out and vote. What would you say? Like, what does this say about her fans and the culture that we live in today and how influential pop culture and social media, Social media has been to drive these economic systems?
- [14:04]
C
Well, there's two things that I think Taylor did early on in her career that have made her uniquely successful. One is so maybe three. The third one has nothing to do with Taylor's intents, but she has grown up at the precise moment in time where there was an expansion of social media, where being able to connect directly with the consumer and directly with your. With your fans and clients was, you know, became an option. And Taylor was young at the time when that those type of activities started happening. She was a teenager and she, you know, leaned in really hard to the social media aspect as a teen and being able to connect directly with fans. She, you know, and she did that in a very authentic way. And, you know, that's how she writes her music. You know, that authenticity, I think, is the other thing that propels her. But the second piece is. So she had A moment, you know, where she was able to connect with her fans and where she chose to do that really intentionally, and that has extraordinarily paid off for her. The second piece is that part of what that did, I think, for her, is it broke down the barriers that industry executives put in place between the fans and the singers or the fans and the artist. The second piece is she wanted to, from the very beginning, when she was just a teen starting, she wanted to write country music songs for other teen girls. And music executives really kind of balked at that and didn't take it seriously. And they were like, that's not a market that we, you know, focus on. You know, there's no money in that. And. And. But Taylor was committed to that, and she happened to be focusing on, you know, writing songs in country music that would speak, you know, she. She knew that there weren't any music. Wasn't any. Wasn't a lot of country music songs out there that would. That spoke to her teenage experience. And so she, you know, wanted to fill that gap. What probably she didn't even bet on, but definitely country music, exactly execs, didn't bet on, is, you know, this increase in educational attainment of women that we've been experiencing over the past half decade or. And, you know, longer. And this increase in educational attainment tied to a reduction of, like, overt sexism in the workplace. You know, where women are now, you know, still gaps, there's still room to. To improve. But women are much more likely to be in leadership roles today than, you know, women Taylor's age are much more likely to be in leadership roles today. They're much more likely, you know, to have worked continuously. Women of Taylor's generation are less likely to leave the labor force when they start having children. And so this group of women that's around Taylor's age has just so much economic agency and resources that, you know, and they're less likely to get married, so they are more likely to stay in control of their, you know, they're more likely to still just be in control of their own income and, you know, spend it how they want, whether it's on, you know, leisure, something that gives them joy, like a Taylor Swift album or something else. So all of this has just kind of converged into this moment of time and has just really had a serious impact on propelling, you know, Taylor into stardom, making her a billionaire, you know, her there then, you know, turning around and having this kind of global, massive impact on. On economies and on. On Society in general. And it's just been fun to watch. But I. I think it's a mix of all of those things. You know, she. Early on, you know, early on in her career, being able to connect directly with fans became a thing, and she tapped into that. And then she's just growing up in a generation where, you know, women are really accelerating in terms of controlling and owning their own wealth and their own, you know, pocketbook and economic power.
- [18:57]
B
Yeah, that makes a lot of sense. And even, like in the book, as I was reading and just with our work together, I think you do a really fabulous job of blending that rigorous data with humor. You also blend personal stories and fun, playful Taylor Swift song titles and lyrics, which makes total sense since given the name and who it's about for people who may not be in the economic space. Was this a strategic choice for you to reach people beyond that industry? I mean, when I read the book and I don't even have a strong economics background, I felt like I understand everything you were saying. Was that part of your writing process to make sure that this was going to be available, you know, easily available and read by everybody?
- [19:46]
C
Yeah, I mean, I was really, really dedicated to making this an accessible book. And one of my goals and kind of passions in life is to get more women into the field of economics. You know, the field of economics parallels a lot of the issues in the music and entertainment industry just in terms of the general misogyny that exists, the dominant thinking, you know, driven by male perspectives and, you know, so much math. So much math. And so it's often. It's often seen as intimidating or unrelatable or uninteresting for a lot of young women. And, you know, I fell into the field of economics kind of through a backwards path, but I'm really, really interested in getting young women into the field of economics. And so, you know, that was. So my goal was kind of twofold. One was really to make. To help folks understand the core essence of economics and what it's about without, you know, fancy words and without, you know, fancy math. And then. But then also, I really, really hope that young women read the book and discover some sort of interest or passion or curiosity about economics and are interested in studying it and, you know, looking into it further.
- [21:20]
B
Yeah. You also emphasize women investing in one another. I wanted to ask, what does that look like beyond actually what we know is investing like investing in a stock? What does it look like to invest in another person or in another, like for another woman in the community?
- [21:37]
C
This episode is brought to you by Trace Minerals. Most people aren't getting the minerals they need to support optimal movement and your body doesn't make them on its own. That's why Trace Mineral drops delivers over 70 essential minerals to help restore what your body is missing. So if you're choosing just one supplement, make it minerals. Trace minerals. Minerals keep you moving. Save 20% on TraceMinerals.com with CodePodcast. Yeah, so I mean, it can look many different ways, but I think one of the best ways that we invest in each other is through supporting each other, through helping other women achieve their goals, whatever they might be, through, you know, being open and talking with them about barriers that they're experiencing. One of, I'll use again the field of economics as an example, but there's a lot of traditional also call it that thinking in or has been in the field of economics around gender and gender equality and the way that women are treated. And there are lots of either ill informed or misinformed experiences that young women have in the field. Just either because whoever is in a position of more dominant power doesn't understand the power that they have in that relationship and so doesn't see it as, as a barrier or constraint and, or there's, you know, so many ways in which we are traditionally thought to think about men and women. So a common example in the field of economics. I don't know how much it happens today, but when I was coming up, it was definitely common. You know, women were told not to have children until after tenure because if you had a child then that would, you know, if you, if you started having kids, you would be seen as less serious and less dedicated to your craft and you wouldn't then get, get tenure, you wouldn't get promoted, which is what tenure is. And so, you know, and women wouldn't talk about it. They would just feel shame and frustration and like anxious about like, what am I supposed to start a family? And men never had to deal with this. Men could just, male economists could just have children whenever they wanted and nobody would like judge them. And I think one of the ways that we can like best support women and this example is by all of us talking about this and saying like, this isn't okay. And you know, you know, women are different than men and you know, women should be able to, you know, start their families whenever, you know, it's best suited for them. And they shouldn't be shamed by their profession as, as not being as serious about the profession. And you know, that whole idea of you know, you're not as serious about the profession is a very. It's. It's really a power trip because, you know, men are asked to traditionally aren't asked to engage in, you know, hosting a baby inside their womb for nine months. Like, women are. Like, there's just differences there that, you know, need to be understood in a different light. And so, you know, part of my goal, I think, as we're supporting women moving up in their careers, is we need to stop comparing ourselves to men, and we need to, you know, design systems that work for us. This is why I love what Taylor is doing, what Beyonce is doing, what Pink is doing, what Reese Witherspoon is doing, because they're basically. They've pulled themselves outside of that structure and started designing something new and different that works for them.
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B
And what's your message to the men? How can they also support the woman around them?
- [25:51]
C
Yeah, I mean, I think lots of times what happens. Okay, so, I mean, we're talking here, I guess, about, like, you know, men and women, right? But it could be any sort of dynamic where there's a difference in hierarchy within the social system that we live in, which gives one group more power and one group less. Right. So it's not actually that the group has more power and the group. Other group has less, although sometimes they do, but there's this perception within society, and then people act on that perception. Right. And so one of the things that I think happens a lot, at least what I've seen and experienced, is that in this context where we are talking about men and women, it's that men don't have the experiences that women do. And so, you know, they don't have the barriers, the same barriers that we do. And again, I'm talking about averages. And, you know, there are men who have experienced more barriers than other women have experienced. You know, people will argue that Taylor Swift has not experienced any barriers, but I think if you follow her career path, you would see that, you know, misogyny was a huge barrier for her that she was able to overcome. But I think the point is, if you're in a position of power where you have, you know, access to do things, access to ascend is easier for you. Access to make decisions is easier for you. The best thing that you can do is to just stop and listen to the other side who has. Who's experiencing the barriers, and really try to understand the barriers from their perspective. Because, you know, I'll take the. I'll use a social policy example in the. In The United States, you know, we have never been able to successfully instill universal childcare, right? And universal child care. I mean, people, you know, the, the folks who like to be triggering will say, oh, that's socialist or whatever, but we have universal school. You know, we have universal child care for kids age 5 to 17. It's called public school system. And if we were to, you know, if we were to decide that as a society we value enough the early education of our really young kiddos, it's not that difficult. Just expand public schooling systems down to like, age 1 or age 0 or whatever it is. It just requires resources. And, you know, there's already infrastructure there. But we have a, you know, we have a Congress that has traditionally been dominated by older white men who have never been held back in their careers. The majority of them have never been held back in their careers by the need to care for their children. And so they don't get it. Like, they don't understand. And so, you know, one of the things that I think I say this in the book, but, like, in my lifetime, I have experienced an airline bailout, two auto industry bailouts, a banking bailout. And really, this is about. It's about priorities, and it's about who, who and what we value in society. And so, you know, you have people in control of resources and power who are making decisions about who's valuable enough to bail out, and they're never bailing out mothers, and they're never bailing out, you know, caregivers and people who really hold our economy and our formal society outside of our homes up. And so that's, that's, you know, I forgot why I was talking about this now, but, like, that's what I really hope to see in my lifetime is that we finally get into a space where people who have lots of power and privilege in society in terms of caregiving and the way that they experience the world stop and listen and honestly listen to people who are held back by heavy care demands. And then that they try to do something about making it more equitable, making life more manageable for people who do have heavy care loads. And if that's in the house with a partner, then that's really like picking up the slack on doing, you know, contributing more to domestic workload. If it's in a policy sphere, it's really about actually putting, you know, our money where our mouth is and, you know, using taxpayer dollars to support infrastructure that makes, writ large, on average, our lives better as a community and as a society.
- [30:42]
B
What's One statistic or finding during your research process that surprised you or you weren't really expecting or did nothing surprise you at all.
- [30:53]
C
So my favorite statistic is when we look at labor force participation. Maybe I have two. But the one that I'll say is when we look at labor force participation, formal labor force participation, and we look at moms and dads, dads have anywhere between 95 to 97% labor force participation. Moms. It's today, it's, you know, much higher than it has been in the past. But today it's between like 70 to 75% labor force participation. So if you just look at those two statistics, you would say, oh, men are more economically active than women. And over time and over history, we've had this belief in our head that men, and even economists, when, you know, in 1970s, labor economists, when they were doing research on labor force participation, they just took all the women out of their sample and only studied men because they felt like women were too complex because they were making these joint decisions between having children and working for pay. But this framing that women are less economically active than men is totally based on a dominant perspective within my profession about how we count and measure and value economic activity. So, you know, if you go out of your home and go work in a restaurant and, you know, as a cook, and you make meals for other people, you get a wage for that. And we count you in that labor force participation statistic, if you're at home making a meal for your family, we don't count you. That's invisible work that you're doing. It's the same exact economic activity. But in one instance we count it, in the other, we don't. And so what I did was I went back. I have this project called the Care Board. You can go and see the. The project and the data, the care board.org but in the Care Board, what we did is we said, okay, let's not limit ourselves to just valuing economic activity that gets a wage. Let's value all economic activity. And if you do that, you find out that women are one hour more per day economically active than men. The flip side of that is men have one hour more of leisure per day than women do. And one hour may not seem like much. It's washing a load of clothes, it's making a meal. But if you add that up over the span of a year, it's like two or three months more of economic activity that women are doing relative to men. And if you want to get angry about it, you know, that's like two or three months more of leisure that men have than women. And now you compound that by the fact that there's a gender wage gap and you know, that grows even further.
- [33:44]
B
So if someone's listening right now and they're navigating a major life shift, whether that's a career change, moving to a different state, or becoming a first time parent, how can they, this book help them reframe their mindset into going into this next chapter that might feel very scary when talking about reinventing ourselves.
- [34:07]
C
Yeah. So I think at the core, the best advice perhaps that one could give is that, you know, we're all different, we're all humans, we exist in a social network, but inside of us we all have different preferences, desires, you know, beliefs, goals. And I think we need to stop comparing ourselves to everybody else around us and just figure out what it is that we want. And the way that economists would tell you to think about this and you know, this isn't a story. You know, economics isn't about finance, it isn't about banking, it isn't about Wall Street. I mean, that's like a really small sliver of what economics is all about. But economics as a profession is really about thinking about, thinking about the resources around you, thinking about your own preferences, you know, what, what, what gives you joy, you know, what, what, you know, what brings you happiness for, for example, and then moving in that direction. And so when we're thinking about our career paths, when we're thinking about what should I be doing right now or like I'm not happy, you know, I'm not in a position right now where I feel like my talent is being used to its max, where I'm not, where I don't feel like I'm developing my skill sets any further and I want to, you know, any of those type of thoughts going through one's head, then I think the next step is to think about if I was to be in a situation where I would feel happier or I would feel more content, where I would feel, you know, where my, where my needs would be met, but also I would be pushing myself a little bit. Like, what does that environment look like to me in my head? Like what, what feels like the best version of this next step and then going in that direction. And part of this process, I think is actually having lots of conversations with people around you. And you know, that's where like the, this whole idea of, you know, mentorship and sponsorship comes in. But at the end of the day, you know, I, I think the best advice anyone can give is just to think about. When you, when you think about scenario A versus scenario B, which one do you feel more at peace with? Which one do you feel more excited about? Which one do you feel, you know, more at ease and like, yep, that's it, you know, that's the direction that you should go. And, and I think, you know, that's what Taylor Swift has done. Right. I mean, she has jumped so many genres when everybody told her, you know, that's crazy, don't do that, or, you know, and so, you know, we do our best work when we feel most attached to what we're doing and we also are willing to work harder when we feel that attachment and that desire to the thing. And so, you know, sticking with that as like a human truth and then moving your career and yourself and your decisions both about family and work and whatever it might be is really, I think the best advice anyone can get. And I think that I'm hope, I hope that that comes out through this book.
- [37:40]
B
Yeah. What advice do you have for young women? Say, for example, if they're in college right now studying economics and want to go into this industry that's obviously very male dominated, what do you say to them, you know, when they're submitting themselves for a job or going to that first interview that can, it can be very scary if you don't see other people that look like you sitting across the table.
- [38:03]
C
Yep. So support group is huge. I think the women that thrive in my profession thrive because we've found each other and we have similar, similar experiences. And it might not be, you know, it might not be the group that I found might not be directly in my university. It might be through a network of women in the field of economics and other universities. It might be by creating a network of women in science or in STEM within your university. But I think having a support group is like really critical. And, you know, interviewed a handful of female economists for this book and all of them have said, you know, and there's a story in my book about Kate Bond, who is the chief economist at the Institute for Women and policy research in D.C. and she said that, you know, she, I think she studied in London if I remember correctly, but you know, predominantly men and there was a handful of women from different graduating classes, but you know, you do four years. So they all got together and they created a group where they would meet regularly and you know, do non economic stuff like, you know, knitting or, you know, whatever. Like that's a Very stereotypically gendered thing. But, like, they would find things that they all had in common, and then they would do that. And she has said that, you know, that was what got her through. And she has a story, and I think I write about it in the book, where all of the teaching assistants would get together and do, like, a poker night. And she was the only female teaching assistant, and they didn't invite her and weren't inviting her, and they said, well, we want to talk about things that we don't want to talk about in front of women. So that was like a very exclusionary experience for her, you know, but she didn't. She didn't internalize that. This is the. So Kate's mom is a. Is a scientist, a hard scientist. And I feel like when you grow up with women around you who have kind of bucked the. The norm, it's easier for you not to internalize some of this stuff. But so, you know, Kate was like, well, okay, I'm not a part of that group, but let me make my own group. And then that's what she did. And, you know, I think that's what got her through. And so it's finding a support group. It's finding people who have similar interests to you and, you know, getting feedback from them. And then it's also not internalizing the misogyny. Right. Like, I think Taylor Swift is like the queen of that. She refuses to let some of that behavior make her feel like she's somehow inferior. She's good at keeping it at bay and calling it out for what it is. And I think the more that we can do that, the better off we are in the long run.
- [40:59]
B
Yeah, I mean, we're starting to see a lot of this happen already on college campuses. At Rutgers, there's a woman in business group, and then there's also mit, which is another big one. And it's just starting to happen all across the country. And a support group, I think, even for anything, is really important, no matter what you're going through. So that's really good advice.
- [41:20]
C
Yeah.
- [41:21]
B
One last fun question I have for you is, who is a woman in pop culture right now that you feel people are underestimating economically? It doesn't have to be in music, but anyone that's just been in the. In the light the last couple of years that you feel might be heading into the same path?
- [41:40]
C
Wow, that's such a great question. So many, I mean, you know, women are on fire in the music industry, so it's hard to think of, you know, you can think of Olive. I mean, think of any of the women that Taylor has been pulling up along with her. You know, whether it's Sabrina Carpenter or.
- [42:00]
B
Recy Abrams is another.
- [42:01]
C
Yes. Yeah. But, yeah, I mean, it's hard. I'm just trying to think of, like, in politics, is there anyone. Oh. So I will say this maybe is like, a little bit weird or controversial or whatevs, but. Or maybe not controversial, but I'm going to say Kamala Harris. I. I think, you know, and along those same lines, when Hillary Clinton was on the ticket as well, I think we have, as a society a strong, strong lack of willingness to support competent women. And. And we're willing to really support crazily incompetent men rather than support competent women. And so I think, you know, anybody in the political sphere. Any women, you know, women in the political sphere, I think that's still one of the. The lingering spaces that we need to do some work. Yeah.
- [43:08]
B
I was also thinking about the sports industry and Caitlin Clark. She's just been really. Yeah, she's just been in the news all the time. And women sports in America in general just aren't as popular as male sports. So I think it's really fascinating that Caitlin Clark is kind of coming out of nowhere. And then we also have Angel Reese, and they also kind of have some drama, so that kind of ignites the fire of them getting more popularity. And there's just so many industries that still need a lot of work. And, you know, the music industry is certainly one of the biggest ones where we have to just keep. Keep pushing along, and hopefully we will see brighter days for women and not feel so judged all the time for wanting to reinvent themselves, so.
- [43:59]
C
Yeah, I agree. And I, you know, the more that we talk with each other about these issues, the more, you know, that we normalize some of this stuff, I think the easier it is for women in general to not get bogged down by it. So I think we need to keep on doing that.
- [44:16]
B
Yeah, absolutely. Well, thank you so much, Misty. It was a wonderful conversation.
- [44:21]
C
Yeah, thanks for your time. I appreciate it.