Taylor Swift’s ‘Productivity as Art’: Women Balancing Career and Home Responsibilities Amidst Rising Pressures

When pop superstar Taylor Swift released her double album “The Tortured Poets Department” on April 19, featuring a whopping 31 self-composed songs, one particular lyric from the track “I Can Do It With a Broken Heart” struck a chord with many of her listeners: “I cry a lot, but I am so productive, it’s an art.”
As of April 25, over 98,00 short-form video posts on TikTok featured this line alongside glimpses into the users’ daily routines. This resonated with both millennials and Gen Zers according to Casey Lewis, a social media trend forecaster, indicating that these generations are experiencing similar “girl boss” pressures as their predecessors did famously grow up.
Taylor Swift isn’t the only one singing about such issues; women continue working more but still take on heavier household chore and caregiving burdens, according to a recent survey by Pew Research Center and government data analysis. In February 2024, the labor force participation rate among women between ages 25 and 54 was recorded at an impressive high of 77.7%. Yet despite this rise in employment figures, division of labour in households has barely shifted for these generations.
“We are expected to wear many hats and achieve similar benchmarks at work but often without the care infrastructure or equitable distribution of labor at home,” said Heather Boneparth, co-author of The Joint Account – a popular finance newsletter specifically made with couples in mind – on accountability when both parties bring an income to the table. “But we also live in an environment where layoffs are increasingly becoming rampant and living costs have gone up dramatically.”
According to Boneparth, millennials grew up believing that they needed to maximize every minute of their day for productivity’s sake – a mindset shared by Taylor Swift. “It’s interesting because even people in their twenties still cling on with those old sentiments,” Lewis added.
The Pew report also found that women are increasingly shouldering the majority responsibility when it comes to childcare, domestic tasks and care for aging parents – regardless of whether they’re earning more than or less than their partners due largely to societal/cultural expectations. This year alone saw a 4% increase in such responsibilities among working mothers living with a partner who have children at home (now standing at half). Furthermore, an alarming number of women still feel that it is necessary for them to prioritize the career goals of their partners over themselves because they believe these actions would better support families or simply adhere more strongly towards cultural norms.
According to Deloitte’s Women At Work report published this year, stress levels among working women have risen due largely to long work hours contributing negatively to poor mental health – a trend that has been on the upswing over time for both genders across multiple demographics as reported by numerous organizations such as the American Psychological Association and Harvard Health.
Taylor Swift’s candid new lyrics hit particularly close-to-home due partly in no small part to our ongoing, techno savvy generations’ unrivaled familiarity with technological innovation alongside their exposure to economic realities – a phenomenon that Lewis attributes largely to the platform TikTok. “Even though you may not be reading traditional news sources anymore,” she explains, ‘the social media channel makes visible to individuals around how their life fits within today’s economy.”
The ongoing challenges facing working women in contemporary society continue being studied and reported on by various organizations such as Deloitte – with Emma Codd (Deloitte’s Global Chief Diversity, Equality & Inclusion Officer) stating that it is critical to keep an open dialogue regarding these issues. “We need more discussions,” she insists while simultaneously underscoring the value of Taylor Swift’s recent music offering in terms of encouraging much-needed conversation about contemporary women’s workplace dilemmas.”