Women Disrupt Re-Visited: A Tribute to Women's International Day, March 8, 2023

 Like a Rolling Stone

Women Disrupt and Create

Feminine Freedom!

Go Ladies - Go for Change!

Happy International Women’s Day - 8 March 2023!

 Is it time to renew and revitalize the Women's Liberation Movement started in the 60s?

Going Full Circle!

I listen to a number of Podcasts regarding Finance&Economics, Music and News and came across one about developments in Popular Music production with a bit of history and analysis from "Plain English”* (links  at the end). Another Podcast, “Today Explained” featured the story, “The Rockstar Maesto”** of Gustavo Dudamel who has brought classical music to the masses in Los Angeles. Now he’s announced that he’s taking his talents to New York, which could revive classical music on one of its biggest stages. They reminded me of some work I did in 2018 trying to construct a Music Indicator which would try to analyze if popular music reflected not only cultural trends, but also economic ones. And if so, would those trends influence sentiment in the financial markets. The only real interesting influence I found was that of the sitting President (POTUS) and music trends during his watch, for example: Jimmy Carter loved Rock, Reagan oversaw the rise of the Pop Star, Clinton helped popularize Country, and Obama, Hip-Hop and then there’s Techno—started in the 80’s, popularized in the 90’s? One might say, current music trends are characterized by a combination of all above, but mostly Pop. And I would say, Rock N’Roll and Techno were highly responsible for influencing the “counterculture”spirit.   

In reviewing this work,  I found a kind of conclusion which I actually think is rather cool, esp. the last line. Here it is:

“Americans over 60 are Boomers and the founders, heroes and victims of disruption and the call for change in the ’60s and ’70s. Social and political change was expressed in music, fashion, hair, drugs, literature and activism to name just a few influences. The ’60s and ’70s were a time of not only change, but challenge taking on the establishment. This romantic notion dissipated as Baby Boomers got into the full swing of making money. The ‘New Age’ today is represented in StartUps, innovation and sharing, still change and challenge in the way of disruption, but as it is so business oriented, could we say it is the new establishment?!? Being “boxed” so that you fit or fuel an algorithm? Have we moved from a feminine revolution of social change to a more masculine one of Tech disruption?”

Just imagine, Baby Boomers in the USA are all over 60 (in Germany it started 10 years later), so is their age a valid excuse for their current behavior inspiring that “OK Boomers” accusations? They came into their formative years in the 60s and 70s. The 60s were a time of disruption, civil rights, social change and emancipation where the Vietnam War, the establishment, the need to rebel against the parents’ generation and experiment played forceful  roles – true liberation and the quest for greater freedom. Today, the disruption is technologically and convenience driven and in some ways, a sacrifice of freedom to the hegemony of the Internet, Social Media and advances in Artificial Intelligence all adding up to political polarization and hostilities and a new counterculture on the other side. Actually a lot like the 60s. Are we going full circle where the Boomers have become mainstream, establishment—all that they strived to avoid in their youth?

The following excerpt from "Like a Rolling Stone, A Memoir" by Jann S. Wenner, the founder of the Rolling Stone Magazine, (Little, Brown, 2022, pages 236, 237) describes in a nutshell the evolving counterculture trend of 60s into the 70s:

"I decided to put Donna Summer on the cover of an issue in March 1978. Disco was considered the music of the anti-Christ by many, and the staff (of the Rolling Stone) was up in arms. I thought the music was strong and made you want to dance, dance, dance. Wasn't that where rock had started? In the end, it was more about one's choice of clothes than anything else, and maybe subconscious anti-gay prejudice. There were other tensions in the the Rolling Stone gestalt then. I could see them, at least metaphorically, in a gauzy and glamorous Jefferson Starship cover, full makeup, dressed by stylists, hair blowing in the breeze of studio fans. A decade earlier Jefferson Airplane sang 'White Rabbit' and spoke to the counterculture dream. Now their lives had gotten complicated by their success, money and the freedom to have internal creative differences. The culture we had helped shape had been absorbed into the mainstream.”

 "It was becoming clear that the cultural center of the country had moved away from San Francisco, and the greater part of it was back in New York again. San Francisco, as a new and dynamic city of the arts, politics, and rock and roll, had gone quiet. Rock and roll now included television, movies, and literature: we broadened our coverage accordingly. We even had a rock and roll president, of sorts, in Jimmy Carter. The saga of the hippies was losing its story line, though the relevance of its many concerns--drug use and enforcement, healthy living, care for the environment, sexual freedom, and human rights--was more urgent than ever. Flower Power was dead, and it was time to move on. Tim Leary understood it: 'We must pray for Jann. He is at the crossroads, either he will go too commercial or not commercial enough.'"

Then came the Pop Star trend.

“There are still pop stars, and there is still popular music—but they don’t overlap nearly as often as they used to. The Pop Star as we know it is a product of the 80s. The popular music of the 60s and 70s is still popular today with an uncanny influence reflecting not only its endurance but its reflection of change.”***

The 60s were very political and volatile economically. The 80s and 90s with Reagan and Clinton in particular brought in growth economically, also in wealth and the wealth divide, innovation upto the 2000 dot-com bust and 9/11 instigating economic and financial volatility and political anger calling for change, first Obama after Bush and then Trump after Obama****.  Now Biden — his music playlist seems to cover the whole spectrum—does Biden close the circle? Back to the 60s?

I included some of my sources from the 2018 original Blog idea in the notes below and you will find out how fascinating the discussion points are and so similar to the current ones, on cultural and political influences, how men have gotten more conservative already starting in the late 60’s(!) and getting more critical today. AND the inequity in not only the gender gap, but also in wealth and social standing. 

The world needs to revitalize a more creative social liberation, some good vibrations and its femininity (figuratively) wouldn’t you say? Close  or eliminate those gaps mentioned above in a true democratic spirit. Are the GenX, Y and Zs going to lead this new counterculture like their parents and/or grandparents in the 60's and 70’s and actually bring on an enduring peace. Hey, why not?

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*The Science of How Music Hits Have Changed in the last 60 Years, Plain English with Derek Thompson: https://podcasts.apple.com/de/podcast/plain-english-with-derek-thompson/id1594471023?i=1000601425906

** https://podcasts.apple.com/de/podcast/today-explained/id1346207297?l=en&i=1000602682496

***Has 2018 Killed the Pop Star? (https://www.vanityfair.com/style/2018/06/2018-year-the-pop-star-died?mbid=nl_CH_5b2d36d8c5251462a076a075&CNDID=49272215&spMailingID=13742238&spUserID=MjA3NDE0MzM5NDMxS0&spJobID=1422036611&spReportId=MTQyMjAzNjYxMQS2.

****https://www.billboard.com/articles/news/politics/7685091/obama-music-culture-shift

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Some more Notes and Food for Thought on Politics and the Gender Gap (2018)

From The Vanity Fair Diaries (1983-1992) by Tina Brown, Henry Holt and Company, NYC, NY, 2017, page 363

“What will the nineties bring? Schiff (https://www.vanityfair.com/contributor/stephen-schiff) has done a great essay in the mag on the Particle People (https://www.vanityfair.com/news/2013/08/letter-from-the-future-nineties-technology),  which we’re all becoming splintered apart by the inequity of wealth, by the seventies counterculture before it, the youth boom, the changing demographics, isolated by our camcorders and fax machines and home computer modems on the desk. That’s why we like Roseanne, because she’s so old-school and overweight. How do particles not become alienated? By feeling part of a mass wave that technology will deliver. According to Schiff by the mid-nineties computer owners will be able to buy everything from their home offices and retail marketing will become a dinosaur.”

https://www.nytimes.com/2018/07/12/opinion/trump-midterms-gender-gap.html?em_pos=small&emc=edit_ty_20180712&nl=opinion-today&nl_art=0&nlid=75316253emc%3Dedit_ty_20180712&ref=headline&te=1 

In their 1999 paper, “The Changing Politics of American Men: Understanding the Sources of the Gender Gap,” Kaufmann and Petrocik demonstrated the growing conservatism of men — a process that had actually begun in 1968. The accompanying graphic derived, in part, from their paper, tracks partisan identification from 1952 to 2016. Among women, allegiance to the Democratic and Republican parties remained relatively constant. For men, however, Democratic loyalty declined sharply from 60 percent in 1964 to 43 percent in 2016, while Republican partisanship grew from 32 to 49 percent.