Taylor Swift and Beyoncé aren’t just sparkly entertainment superstars — they’re moguls who drive millions of dollars into the economies of every city they visit.
A new book by a University of Kansas associate professor explores the lessons their careers can offer all women about excelling in a system that was not built with them in mind.
“There are many women doing amazing things against all odds,” writes Misty Heggeness, with KU’s School of Public Affairs and Administration. “If you look around in your own profession, you will most likely find women doing amazing work that highlights their lived realities.”
But Heggeness’ book, “Swiftynomics,” set to be released January 2026, is based on things more complex than just amazing work.
She cites Swift’s commitment to raise up other women in her field, rather than treat them as enemies. Swift includes female artists like Ice Spice, Gracey, and Sabrina Carpenter on playlists, and regularly writes lyrics or songs about others, like Lady Idina Sackville, Clara Bow, Stevie Nicks and Rebekah Harkness.
That practice flies in the face of what Heggeness identifies as the traditional way to keep women in their place: pit them against each other.
Heggeness also identifies, and names, a maneuver called “mastermind,” after the 2022 Taylor Swift song. It’s a special, persistent way of getting around obstacles.
“Often, that is a long-term vision,” Heggeness says, “and it requires going around people when they say ‘no.’”
Heggeness writes about Swift’s ability to reinvent herself, from country singer to pop icon, and reinvent industry production standards for music, concerts, books and videos.
Take for instance the time Swift famously re-recorded her existing catalog to regain artistic and financial control of her material after her former record label sold it in a reported $300 million deal.
“Beyoncé (also) has really been an excellent example of that,” Heggeness says. “She sang a song at the Country Music Awards (in 2016) with the Dixie Chicks, and there was a big pushback about, ‘Beyoncé isn't country, she doesn't belong here.’”
Rather than concede and move on, Beyoncé reinvented and masterminded, recording an entire country album, called “Cowboy Carter,” which became the third most nominated album in Grammy Awards history.
For Heggeness, the book is itself an attempt to mastermind around decades of female exclusion in the field of economics.
“It’s about understanding the economic value that women bring to the table within society, to help with things like economic growth and development,” she says, referring largely to unpaid work — still mostly performed by women, and critical to the larger economy.
And while the wage gap between men and women has closed for childless women between 25 and 34, it’s still very much open for most mothers, Heggeness writes. The drop-off in wages is called “the motherhood penalty.”
“Which, by the way, follows them for the entire arc of their lifetime earnings,” she says. “It's a big deal.”
“It's really that critical space that we ignore in economics, where, when women start to experience heavy levels of unpaid, informal, often invisible care to family members, it really hurts them in the labor market,” Heggeness explains.
The oversight happens because economic theory is based on people who have care privilege, as Heggeness calls it, meaning that person’s success in the labor market depends on the privilege of having someone else feed them, do their household chores, and care for their dependents — duties that still typically fall to women.
“Workers needed to thrive in their homes before they could thrive in the world outside of them,” she writes.
Heggeness writes that until after World War II in England, “no standardized methods for identifying whether an economy was flourishing or faltering existed.”
When a team of economists set out in the 1940s to develop metrics to measure economic growth, Phyllis Deane, of the National Institute of Economic Research in London, was among them.
“She believed the value of time spent on the production of household and family well-being should also be measured,” Heggeness writes. “If workers were undernourished in the home, they would not be as productive in their work building boats, for example, and fewer boats would get made.”
Ultimately, the team ignored Deane’s suggestion — a treatment many women can relate to. In her case, the result has lasted decades, Heggeness writes, “ensuring its invisibility within the economy and society’s perceptions of economic activity.”
Still, she’s hopeful. While true equity will require work on the policy level and within economic theory, people like Swift and Beyoncé succeeded in their male-dominated fields through grit, determination and strategy.
“I think that's something that all of us can do,” Heggeness says.
Misty Heggeness will discuss “Swiftynomics: How Women Mastermind and Redefine Our Economy” at 6 p.m. on Tuesday, Aug. 26, at the Kansas City Public Library’s Plaza branch, 4801 Main St., Kansas City, Missouri 64112. The event is free with RSVP. More information at KCLibrary.org.
