As of 2024, it’s been 32 years since journalists introduced the phrase “Year of the Woman.” After 1992 presented a year of unparalleled success for women in the United States Senate, story headlines boosted the slogan. For some, like Senator Barbara Mikulski, the motto sparked opposition. In response, Mikulski said, “[women are] not a fad, a fancy, or a year.”
Thirty-two years later, Mikulski has been proven right: women are not a fad, nor is their success confined to a single year, though 2023 was one for the books.
Most notably, the onslaught of advertisements for the “Barbie” movie ushered in a massive amount of success for the film’s team and was even recognized, by some, as the call for echoed “girl power” across the nation. A film that touches on themes of womanhood, equality, and self-esteem, “Barbie” made history as the largest debut film solo-directed by a woman, Greta Gerwig, bringing in $356 million worldwide, according to The Guardian. Following the movie’s debut success, the film became Warner Bros.’s highest-grossing film of all time bringing in $1.4 billion worldwide, according to The Numbers.
Women also had groundbreaking success in the music industry. A surprise to very few, the overwhelming success of Taylor Swift’s Eras Tour was evident on all social media platforms. The communities surrounding Swift’s music and brand are not exclusively bound to music venues. Available to everyone, the tour lives on in the 2023 film, “Taylor Swift: The Eras Tour.” A tour in itself that broke world records, Swift now holds the record for the highest-grossing concert of all time, a title previously held by Elton John. Swift is also the first musician to gross $1 billion while touring, spurring the term “Swiftonomics” a phrase some use to describe the economic impact Swift’s Eras Tour alone had on both the U.S. and international economies.
Taylor Swift wasn’t the only musician to release a film covering her economy-boosting world tour. Beyoncé wrote, directed, and produced the film “Renaissance: A Film by Beyoncé,” which focused on the world tour for her seventh studio album “Renaissance.” Beyoncé went on to make Grammy history with her 32 Grammy win for Best Dance/Electronic Album in February 2023. She is now the most decorated Grammy winner, surpassing Georg Solti, a Hungarian British composer popularly known for his complete set recordings of “Der Ring des Nibelungen,”. Beyoncé’s success was so great in 2023, Yelp dubbed the term “Beyoncé bump” to define the economic growth businesses experienced thanks to her tour.
Another woman making headlines in music is Tracy Chapman. Chapman’s 2023 musical success can be attributed to her 35-year-old song, “Fast Car.” Luke Combs released a recent cover of the song, reigniting the popularity of Chapman’s tune. With the newfound attention, “Fast Car” won the Country Music Awards’ Song of the Year, making Chapman the first Black songwriter to win the award.
Pop Culture wasn’t the only field in which women made great strides throughout 2023. Women’s sports broke records in both viewership and attendance for their events. The FIFA Women’s World Cup made history with its views in multiple countries like Australia, New Zealand, Brazil, Colombia, China, and the United States. In Australia and New Zealand, the 2023 women’s World Cup games had more views than any FIFA men’s or women’s games ever.
The fourth game in the 2023 Women’s National Basketball Association’s finals also became the most-watched WNBA Finals since 2003, according to ESPN Press Room.
ESPN Press Room also reported that 19-year-old Coco Gauff’s victory at the 2023 US Open was the most-watched major tennis final for women on ESPN, the second most-watched US Open overall, second behind Serena Williams’ 2022 final match which was the most watched ever.
At the collegiate level, Division 1 women’s volleyball gained a new record in attendance at the 2023 semifinals between Nebraska and Omaha, according to the National Collegiate Athletics Association. Texas won the final game in the NCAA’s Women’s Volleyball Championship, marking the first time Texas women’s volleyball has won two consecutive championships.
Some fields still pose more challenges for women than they do for men. In spite of this, women continue to establish themselves as progressive and successful contributors in these realms. Claudia Goldin, for example, became the first woman to win a Nobel prize in Economic Sciences on her own. Goldin’s prize is groundbreaking in its own right, but the work she did to earn it helped confirm the reality that women are underrepresented and underpaid compared to men in the global labor market.
Narges Mohammadi won the Nobel Peace Prize “for her fight against the oppression of women in Iran and her fight to promote human rights and freedom for all,” as announced on The Nobel Prize website.
With success to this extent, crossing fields, cultures and generations, the assumption that women have established their validity as equals, and, increasingly, as challenging opponents, would not be unfound. Yet, women still face doubts concerning their abilities to succeed and, with more attention on their increasing accomplishments, more hate than praise.
The success of Gerwig’s “Barbie” movie exemplifies that women can and are worthy of the same feats as men and, for Gerwig, are capable of outperforming men in their respective fields. After the announcement that the “Barbie” and “Oppenheimer” movies would be released on the same day, people were quick to make memes pointing out the two contrasting crowds that would be at the theaters for their debuts. Following the initial memes, people started editing the two main characters of each film and boosting the idea of a double feature. Across Reddit threads, TikTok and X, formerly known as Twitter, users announced that they would be dressing up for “Barbenheimer.” It can be said for “Barbie” and “Oppenheimer” that the social media frenzy over their shared debut benefited them both.
Gerwig’s film not only outperformed “Oppenheimer” at the box office but also increased the diversity in viewers of the historical drama: an adversary and an ally. Each film saw an increase in attendance of certain demographics–for “Oppenheimer,” younger women, and for “Barbie” more men–that were not previously inclined to see one of the films en masse prior to the jokes on social media.
Most films directed by women or with leading roles held by women are not as fortunate as Gerwig’s “Barbie,” and on average have smaller budgets than those directed and led by men. In hand with this, box office success is often dependent on the money that’s put into its production. Meaning movies with higher budgets tend to gross more at the box office. Despite increasing success and groundbreaking achievements women like Gerwig have made in the film industry, women are still not seen as worthy contenders of larger film budgets at the same scale men are. Without a budget to match their male counterparts, women’s films face setbacks unique to their gender from the very beginning of their film’s creation.
Despite Swift and Beyoncé’s unmatched touring success, their accomplishments have highlighted the glass ceiling that often separates women from accomplishing the same achievements as men. Of the top 20 highest-grossing tours of all time, only four women are listed. In the top 10, Swift and Beyoncé are the only two women to make the cut. According to this chart, concerts headlined by men are 80% more favored than concerts headlined by women.
When women like Swift and Beyoncé do make headway in the music industry, they often face an onslaught of criticism to a higher degree than men.
Take Swift, for example. After social media feeds filled with “Swiftie” news following the start of her Eras Tour, many were quick to call out the singer’s private jet usage, and, in turn, her carbon dioxide emissions. Carbon emissions and the footprint millionaires and billionaires leave on the Earth with their jet usage is not something that should go unacknowledged; they alone cause destruction to our planet at levels ordinary citizens will never meet in their lifetime. With that said, when this criticism comes, it should be equal, which, as of now, it has not been. This calling out of Swift’s plane usage is a form of nit-picking to discredit her success with some notably terrible vice of hers. The argument that Swift is single-handedly destroying our planet completely ignores the reality that the general demographic of private jet owners are men. People’s wrongful acts, especially those that impact the greater society, should be called out. But doing so to diminish one’s accomplishments while ignoring a specific group (men in this cas), who also contribute to the same problem is extremely hypocritical. Why should one group of people be able to get away with something and keep the notoriety of their success intact while another group is discredited? We cannot single out one woman as a major exacerbator of a problem when others contribute to the problem at greater rates as well.
For Beyoncé, many, including her husband Jay-Z, were quick to call out how she’s been snubbed repeatedly for album of the year at the Grammys. As the most decorated Grammy artist, she has been nominated four times for Album of the Year, losing each time to a white musician. This reality for Beyoncé highlights that, not only does being a woman pose limitations on how much one can succeed, but those challenges are heightened if that woman is also a racial minority.
This is also the reality for Tracy Chapman, who only broke records after a white man replicated her work, used her words and saw success for himself after covering Chapman’s “Fast Car.” In these fields, there is already a lack of representation for women due to biases concerning their potential to succeed, to perform and contribute at the same extremes as men. When one man gets praised and awarded for a Black woman’s work before she is acknowledged for it, how can we call that fair? When minority women’s work is devalued, how is that not cause for concern?
Considering U.S. soccer alone, the national women’s team has proven itself as one of, if not the, best women’s national soccer teams in the world. Not only does the USWNT rank higher than the U.S. men’s team, the USWNT brings in better TV ratings and more revenue. In the face of national and international soccer success for women, Women’s World Cup teams were still awarded just a quarter of what the Men’s World Cup won in prize money in 2023.
Some Women’s World Cup teams, like Canada, England, Jamaica, Nigeria and South Africa, are still protesting for equal pay. The lack of equality for all global women’s soccer teams implies that women’s soccer accomplishments are not as valid or important. While the USWNT has continued to win tournaments and set world records, their feats are diminished as being lesser than their lower-ranked counterparts. Somehow, their wins don’t mean as much as the same wins for the men’s team. Somehow, the same title is worth more depending on the gender it’s associated with.
In academia, the feats of Goldin and Mohammadi are something to be celebrated not only for the notoriety of prizes but because their wins can be compared to a drop in the ocean. In Goldin and Mohammadi’s respected areas of interest, men and women are awarded the Nobel prizes at vastly disproportionate rates: in the Economic Sciences field, of the 93 people who have been awarded the Nobel prize, only three have been women, and of the 111 people awarded Peace prizes, only 19 have been women. These numbers alone show how Academia poses yet another field where women are not recognized as leaders despite their contributions nor are they seen as real contenders for an award as often as men.
All of this is not to say that women’s accomplishments in 2023 are less important due to societal setbacks they faced. These setbacks have shown how women have persevered despite a plethora of reasons to halt their progress in making history.
2023 marked another year of considerable success and achievements made by women in a multitude of industries. Women’s numerous successes have kept momentum into 2024, highlighting that the “Year of the Woman” was not 1992 or 2023. The year of the woman is now and it will be for years to come. The only question is whether we, as a society, will get out of their way.