Transcript for Most Popular episode “Did the Eras Tour Save the Economy?”

Welcome to Most Popular, the podcast that explores the impact pop culture has had on society. I'm Dr. Adrienne Trier Bieniek, a professor of sociology, and I will be your host. Today's guest is Dr. Cecilia Rio from Townsend University in Maryland. Cecilia is an economist who looks at the ways inequality plays out in the economy, particularly with regard to women of color.

I wanted to talk to Cecilia because I am fascinated with a new story that came out in the summer of 2023. Multiple stories were published, including on NPR and Fortune, addressing the ways the combination of Taylor Swift's Eras Tour, Beyonce's Renaissance Tour, and the film Barbie had driven the economy for the summer.

And the Eras Tour in particular was noted as a financial boom for the cities [00:01:00] she visited. So much so. That governors, mayors, and even the Canadian prime minister were asking for Swift and her Swifties to come to town. What is interesting about this to me is that you have a trio of women, and I include Greta Gerwig, the director of Barbie here who have brought back an economy, and people are shocked by it.

The purchasing power of women is traditionally left to things like household cleaning products, or never ending skincare products that we are supposed to want to devour, and yet, here we have three examples of how empowering women and girls can have a direct impact. Connection to the economy. I talked with Cecilia about all of this, and I love the way she puts all of it into context.

I hope you enjoy this conversation while you are hopefully sitting comfy in your mojo dojo casa houses with your karma cat sitting on your lap while you release your wiggle. Here's our [00:02:00] conversation. My name is Cecilia Rio. My PhD is in economics. I consider myself a feminist, politically economist. I do research on race, class, gender, sort of an intersectional lens and the economy.

My dissertational work had to do with the history of African American domestic workers from 1860 to about 1960. And I look at class through a class lens. I argue that there's actually a class transition that really. Fundamentally transformed the nature of domestic work and that African American women are very vital components of that transition and that agency their contribution to the change of domestic work is not really recognized.

Since then I've written pieces on really focusing on domestic labor. The thing with paid domestic work it really sort of straddles that issue of Home production versus paid labor market production, right? And care work, right? And that's an [00:03:00] ongoing problem that still hasn't really been resolved. You know, home, women's home production, what we call, you know, the labor that you do in the home.

Cooking, cleaning, taking care of children, managing your child's schedule, you know, taking care of your child and all those things. Economists call that home production, and that has been, you know, done historically by women, housewives, or heads of households for free or in a by a same sex couple to usually one person tends to get the predominant.

Share of that work and paid work is usually the focus of economics. So there's the ability to find substitutes for that kind of work in the home by hiring a maid for money. And so that really makes this interesting contradiction where Society tends to put a lot of value on the raising of children and the quality of home life, social and moral value, [00:04:00] but very little economic value.

While the contrast is experienced by paid domestic workers, where they have some economic value, but it's not very high. Usually they're probably paid wages. Usually the job comes with no benefits. It doesn't have the same kind of moral privilege. That our society tends to give to mothers. Mm hmm. So, is that giving it enough?

No, that's perfect. Now, I'm also a, let me just say, I'm also a university professor. And I teach young people, and that alone keeps you busy, you know, to be updated, and several generations. So, can you explain what makes an economist feminist, or what's feminist economics? Okay, I'd say feminist economics is the attempt by economists.

To make sure that the discipline is engaged with women's equality and trying to end the sexism, the sexist exploitation and oppression that exists within economic [00:05:00] theory, as well as economic outcomes. I mean, we also study the actual real outcomes, but there are also problems because how do we measure those outcomes?

It's based on statistical models, which are based on theory. And if the theory has an endocentric bias, it's not going to really capture. The true economic experience that women face. Right. The journal also called feminist economics, too, because as more and more women became economists, this is when the issue sort of, you know, became apparent that there was so much endocentric bias in the discipline itself.

And the early attempts to try to address these issues were not necessarily well received. In fact, some of these attempts are still not well received within the mainstream. Economic journals. And so there was a need and a desire to form our own platform. It's a peer review journal. It's highly esteemed.

It's called feminist economics. It's so funny to me how many scholars create that out of necessity because my friend started a journal feminist [00:06:00] criminology decades ago out of the same same kind of basic argument that journals weren't recognizing gender or feminism and criminology. And so she said, well, we have to create one because someone else has got to do it if they're not going to.

Yeah, I mean, the disciplines have gatekeepers, you know, and yeah, part of the system, academia, in fact, is a big part of recreating and perpetuating oppression as well as change, you know, it's both, it's both. But often what you have to do is form your own platform to get your ideas out there. Yeah, so I want to talk about I told you I want to talk about this combination of Barbie Taylor Swift and Beyonce because there's a lot of conversation about how it's driving the economy.

But can you just kind of really basically explain what normally drives an economy like what normally keeps an economy. Moving. That's a really deep question. Yeah, I know. The answers from different types of economists. [00:07:00] So you're mainstream, you know, the mainstream economists, what you're going to hear, you know, on Bloomberg or whatever, is that markets drive the economy.

And the reason why markets work so well is that they capture, you know, they're based on competition and they capture the human desire for profits, as well as the desire, therefore, to make those profits, they create innovation. And that markets are very good at distributing goods. And, and infusing the drive for technological innovation and, you know, quality of life.

And you can see that in certain countries, that's absolutely true. However, how that happens and what really is driving it would be different. For example, if you ask, like in my own field, feminist pool economy, you know, there's a big emphasis on worker productivity. And that worker productivity does not get recognition, nor does it get the rewards that it deserves.

I mean, right now in the economy that we're in, we have a highly unequal [00:08:00] income distribution. Yet, we are more and more productive, but those gains from productivity are going to the very top. So I would argue that it's labor, both paid and unpaid. And again, this is the feminist part, right? Because women and people of color have been doing unpaid labor and various different types of economic processes for centuries.

And that too is part of the economy. So for example, one major intervention, probably the most important intervention that feminists made in terms of the theory of economics was to value home production. Unpaid labor, not only in the United States, which by the way is enormous. I mean, even if you looked at like market substitutes proxies for what the value of this labor would be, it's roughly between a third of quarter of GDP, trillions of dollars that's in the United States.

Now, if you go to a developing nation where, you know, a woman's day [00:09:00] starts maybe two hours pitching water, clean water and bringing it back. The firewood gathering vegetables while taking care of the children, you know, all day and some what's called subsistence labor that unpaid, you know, and we have a large share of that it could be a half of GDP.

And that if it's not recognized, then you know, it's not going to be theorized. And there was a very famous economist, famous economist, Merrill Waring wrote a book if women counted, and she actually Brought this argument to the United Nations and the United Nations had to change its national income accounting to now reflect all this unpaid labor, you know, so if it's this unpaid labor, it's not necessarily going to any market.

You see, so yeah, to me, that is why mainstream economics response is rather incomplete. Right, but someone's still benefiting from that labor, and that's the, that's the trifecta of it right? Yes. Oh, and that contributes to the economy. I mean, right, economists have been saying ad nauseum [00:10:00] forever that labor is a key element.

Of the economy, but they never talk about how that labor is generated, right? One of the conditions of work that requires that labor to, you know, end up being productive labor. You know, just as well that, you know, situation that we're in now, where for decades, it's been very high productivity. Workers are doing their jobs, but the rewards are not going back to the workers.

Right. What I think is interesting about these stories that I sent you about Beyonce, Taylor Swift and Barbie pushing an economy is, I don't know as much about Taylor Swift, but I know like Beyonce and I know the Barbie film were heavy female heavily female dominated in terms of Beyonce doesn't all female band.

She does a majority female production. The Barbie movie, it seemed like it was the majority of the people running it and in positions of power and all of that were women. So I'm curious. What your [00:11:00] thoughts are on why? Well, let's start here. Why do you think that that got attention that trio of of things connected to economic growth?

Why do you think that they were something that people have started to focus on? I think many factors, right? So one is I would affirm what you said that you have highly productive and creative minds. Laborers, they're artists, but they're also laborers, right? They do work, even though we're dancing and singing and enjoying.

Right, right. But they do, right? And they have been very savvy in using their economic power to capture, to direct and control their products. And to capture people's imaginations, you know, so it's very high quality work across the board. So I would say first, let's give credit where credit's due that way.

Right. I think another thing that's going on is that people are starving for connection since the years that we've had to experience with COVID. I know from my own students, I actually. I asked them, you know, [00:12:00] why did you guys attend the Barbie movie? And they didn't say, Oh, I'm a feminist or whatever. They said the experience, that it was nice to bond with their moms or their grandmothers, or they were just excited to see everybody in pink, a social occasion.

So I think that also is playing a big role. People are hungry for social connection. And in terms of women's particular social connection, we've seen, you know, a growing awareness. That women demand equality. I mean, I remember very strongly the Women's March in 2017, the millions of women that came out.

I've been involved for social and social activism for over 20 years. I wouldn't say I'm an activist. Like many, you know, like a Jane Fond or these people who are seriously committed, but I have been involved over time and I can say from my experience, oh, this is incredibly successful. And that was, you know, that made the history books over a million people showed up to.[00:13:00]

To, you know, women's rights. And I think, you know, then there was me too. And, you know, I think women are aware that their security or equality is not promised. I mean, look what's going on in terms of reproductive rights. I personally am appalled to see women in certain states lose their control to control their body.

Which, by the way, has economic effects as well as personal effects in terms of your life outcomes, right? I mean, one of the highest correlations for poverty is being female head of household. You know, and, and there's all kinds of data that, that improves and supports the recognition that for economic development to succeed, women need to have control over their own bodies.

You know, in the development world, you know, so you're seeing, I think, just more of that, you know, the combination of people wanting to get together, but also the recognition that women, you know, demand equality. Now, why haven't we, you know, when I talk to my young students, it's, [00:14:00] they're a bit upset that it hasn't been achieved yet, you know, This has been promised for decades and here we are still having to fight fights that we fought in the seventies, for example.

Yeah. Yeah. That's really, really strong. And then the other thing I'd say, this is really important too, is, you know, women's roles have really changed. So this is about, I don't know, maybe 10 years ago or so women became, if you look at American households, over 60 percent of American households have either two earners or female had a household.

And those foreigners, they need those, both incomes to maintain middle class. It's no longer the case that woman's work is a sideshow or, you know, a side interest that is subsumed by their husband's career. Most middle class families do need to have those two incomes, not all. But many because again of this overriding trend of this huge inequality and the flatlining of wages that has happened for the average American.

So that's women's [00:15:00] economic power has really changed. You know, they don't have to ask their husbands like my mother did. Can I go do this with this money? Can I, they're making their own money. They can decide how to use it. You know, I think this really changes their orientation to, you know, as consumers. I mean, women have always been consumers and have done the majority of the shopping.

But again, when you bring it in the bacon for the family, you know, you don't, you can make these own decisions. And I mean, some of the, the articles that you sent me when I was reading it, you could see it in the dialogue that, you know, women felt that way, you know, It's funny when When Roe fell and Dobbs passed and all that stuff happened, you know, a year and a half ago, I've been studying gender and pop culture for a while and looking at the trends of what kind of spikes in people paying attention to the connection between the two.

And I kind of thought, something is going to happen in terms of pop culture, that's going to expose this, because the notion was. [00:16:00] You take away Roe versus Wade and you take away these rights and, you know, women will just fall. And I thought something's going to happen. That's going to bring a collective together.

And people are going to use that as a motivation to kind of figure out how to rise again. And I'm noticing that that's, I think is what's happening with these, this combination of these three things that you've got these Taylor Swift concerts that are more about. Hanging out, I think. I mean, of course it's about her, but when you see the videos of these girls singing along and bringing everybody in their lives and even parents who kind of were like, I don't know if I want to do this, who are just loving it.

And then you see Beyonce and it's all about celebrating queer culture and then you know Barbie obviously was very direct about the end scene with the gynecologist and you know the, the importance of that. I see, I kind of think that is the trend that you something happens that tries to take away rights.

And I've noticed pop culture finds a way to reflect back at us. Hey, look, we can we can do stuff to empower [00:17:00] ourselves. And whether that's we're going to give you this song and it's going to keep you motivated we're going to give you this concert we're going to give you this film. That's what I'm noticing and it's interesting to me that it's Now becoming noticed as moneymaking, like before it was sort of seen as frivolous and fun.

But when you see how much money a Taylor Swift concert brings to a community, I mean, somebody in Pennsylvania said that the amount of money she brought in would take care of them for the rest of the year in terms of their local government. I mean, that's, that's a lot. Yeah. I mean, yes, the profit motive again is a big drive on the economy so when people do see those dollar signs say.

Pay attention. Yeah, absolutely. Fandom is very powerful. Not only, I mean, fandom I think has always been powerful, even in like the 60s and 70s, but what is different now is that technology is enabling, you know, these communities to be formed virtually, as well as In real time, you know, because the organizing of getting together that kind of thing, [00:18:00] and that the artists themselves are very aware of their fandom and particularly with, Swift has you know, has really nurtured that relationship and strengthen that relationship.

So yeah, it's solidarity. Right. So, you know, we've talked a lot about solidarity before and unions and the power and how do you, you know, The inequality is so huge, you know, people feel sometimes powerless to address these issues, but where you can find power is solidarity is coming together. And, you know, and you have a lot of economic power too.

And then people do start to listen because money talks in a capitalist economy. Is that what you mean when you, when we talk about a political economy, is that what, what that connection is? Well, political economy means you're looking at the economy as a whole. Oh, okay. You know, what is the philosophical opinion?

So the early economists were all political economists, you know, Adam Smith, David Ricardo, Karl Marx, but then when Karl Marx introduced this theory of class and had what was [00:19:00] called a critique of the previous political economy, that's his big book the discipline of economics of political economy became known as economics.

It became very mathematical and it branched off into different theories. Okay. So you have these, like many disciplines, they're theoretical debates. Yeah. But most people don't know that. They only think that the hegemonic, what's dominant in terms of economic theory, which would be neoliberal economic theory now, you know, markets.

Our savior, the profit motive is what drives everything, and that's what drives technology, that kind of stuff. So that's what a political economist is, it's really more understanding the philosophical nature of society, and how does the economy fit into that. As opposed to, I'd say, mainstream economy, since it takes the economy as sort of given, its markets.

We can develop models to study the impact of these markets or right about distribution, but you no longer question the underlying assumptions. [00:20:00] So what keeps the person loyal to a product or a consumer loyal to a product? What do you think? Well, you know, economists would call it a utility or satisfaction that they actually get from the product.

The articles that you gave me and what is being talked about in the media in terms of why these women are different is that it's about female empowerment. There's a sense of empowerment and also authenticity. The issue with empowerment, I can really understand because, again, if you look at the economy as a whole, for the majority of people, it's not an easy time.

Right. You don't necessarily feel empowered as a worker. You know, if you're working a service sector job that's ununionized and you don't have health benefits and COVID, you know, for some workers was devastating. I mean, they, they risk their lives and, and we're not necessarily protected with PPE. This is in part why workers are unionizing as well too.

So, Having the sense of feeling empowered, and I think social media adds to this too, you know, my [00:21:00] students are empowered very much in the sense of the technology. They want to Google something, if they want to check what their professor said, it's at their fingertips, and they do so. And they get together and study groups now and, and use that technology to help empower them.

So, you know, that can build loyalty, that sense of this product or this fandom is where my identity is and I. You know, feel wonderful here and empowered. We'll build loyalty over time. Now that's what feels these incredible fandom, you know, that it's, you get the sense like for Taylor Swift fans, or you could talk about BTS because this too, it does.

Cross gender and stuff. I think the BTS fandom is called the army. You know, they would, they'll do anything. Not anything, but they will do a lot. You know, their leader or the person they feel that inspires them. Right. I want to ask you one more question just for my own entertainment, if that's [00:22:00] okay. What are your thoughts on the writer's strike and the actor's strike and the union stuff that's happening with that?

You know, I think, again, you're seeing an era where workers feel that they have been working for many, many decades and are not getting the just rewards. So, in terms of the writer's strike and the actor's strike, a lot of it has to do with the change of technology, allowing for new streams of income that are monopolized by, in the hands of the few.

And they want some of that income. Striking is never easy. You know, there are a lot of writers, you know, not all Hollywood actors make millions. There are, you know, actors who are, you know, extras. Or theater that doesn't tend to make as much money and the same thing with writers, you know, there's many thousands and thousands of your everyday cultural workers who are just getting by, you know, and they are tired again of their cultural creativity [00:23:00] being appropriated.

You know, the gains from that being appropriated in the hands of just a few people, you know, it's nowhere near they see it as an unjust, it is very difficult to maintain a strike. It's been like three months. Yeah, that's where it gets to. But, you know, again, you're talking about these huge, I mean, in the case of media, we can talk made basically about six or eight major conglomerates that own about 90 percent of media.

How do you, you know, battle with that, that amount of power, the only way that historically we've seen for workers to do that is to strike and prolong strikes to force the issue. You know, I mean, that's kind of going on. That's, you know, it's my sort of two cents. Of the situation, you know, yeah, no, I I'm just curious.

I've been asking a few folks that have more knowledge in this area than I do because I don't do a lot with labor, although I understand the basics of it. And it's just it's interesting to me that it's it's interesting to me how many people who have large platforms on social media who are more famous actors [00:24:00] have been handing microphones over to folks that are like, hey, I make 50, 000 a year.

And here's my here's why this is important. And I'm appreciating that that there's this there's this attempt to focus on those people because that's the reality of it. And I don't the writer strikes and the actor strikes whenever they happen are fascinating to me because it exposes what's really happening with.

The money situation of all of this, right? Like you hear these Avengers films make a billion dollars. Well, the, the folks who have done the, you know, the behind the scenes stuff, they're not making a billion dollars. You know, they're making 40, 50, 000 a year and their job is done and they never see anything else after that.

So it's, it's fascinating to me where we're at in terms of how these, these folks are going to get properly paid and if they can negotiate something that is respectable for them, you know. Right. And also looming in the background too, is AI and yes, yes, to co op their own creative output and, [00:25:00] you know, create a generating revenue.

I mean, use it without their. Rights, right? Or yeah, acknowledgement and then create a revenue stream that they will have no part of, even though they're the ones that created that work, you know, so that's another issue, too. I do not know the technicalities of how that is going to be approached, but I'm sure that is also, you know, like a drumbeat about, you know, having the need to secure some kind of fairness in the workplace for these workers.

Yeah, I did a series on tech for my students where I interviewed a bunch of folks who did quite a few things around tech, but I interviewed one guy who's a project manager at Amazon who's builds the antennas that they're trying to put into space. And he was explaining, he didn't, it didn't end up in the episode, but he was explaining just how much AI.

Like how we have no clue what it can what it can do yet that it's that what we see right now is just the beginning of where it's going to go and I don't mean that in like an alarmist way just in [00:26:00] like a terms of we have to figure out how we're going to react to it because it's it's going to be here and it's going to be something we have to deal with.

Yes, exactly. And the other thing about big tech and big technology, you know, a lot of these inventions or technological innovations have profound effects on our life. They are not mediated by any democratic process, even though it'll completely fundamentally change a society, you know. So that's another issue I think societies are facing is how much can they You know, now what's being presented, perhaps, I know this is the extremist view, but it's, it might eliminate humanity or, you know, be a threat to an existential threat to the continuation of our life as we know it.

And we are facing that with climate change too. So, you know, people are, you know, are, are Very wary about, you know, their position in society. And I think at some point we'll be addressing these issues too. I mean, [00:27:00] government is trying to do it now, but again, the government itself is, I would argue in the hands of more of a, of a few money making or powerful.

Plutocracy. Powerful capitalist interests that buy lobbyists, that pay for lobbyists, that then, you know, pressure politicians to do this or that again. So it's not really a democratic process. Yeah. When you take the historic view, like over time and you look at, you know, the, the rise of democracy, you know, in the fight for democracy, you sort of have a more deeper understanding of, of these, the, That we want to say the complexity, but also at the same time, the, the importance, the incredibly significant role that these issues play in our life and what we need to, you know, humanity as a whole needs to think about.

Yeah, that makes sense, but no 100%. Thank you for this. Conversations like this are why I love [00:28:00] doing this. And like I said, research like yours is the stuff I really get excited when I find being the generation I am and the age I am feminist economics was sprinkled into most of my education and grad school.

So it for me, it's kind of taken for granted that it's It's something that has been there. And so it was very nice to find your work and to read through what you've done and accomplished. And I just very much appreciate it. So thank you for all of it. Once again, I'd like to thank my guest, Dr. Cecilia Rio.

Thank you so much for listening. You can find more episodes of Most Popular on iTunes, Spotify, Google Play, YouTube, wherever you get your podcasts. Please take the time to follow, rate, and review. More information, including additional resources for educators, can be found on my website, adriennetrier-bieniek.com

com, and my website is listed in the episode notes. I am also on Instagram at atdr.adriennetb. Thank you for my students for the encouragement to keep making these episodes, and I will see you next time. Bye![00:29:00]

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