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Speaker 1: Natasha Saraen, associate professor at Yale Law School, writes in

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Speaker 1: The Washington Post that amid the signs of economic optimism ahead,

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Speaker 1: there's one thing that shined very brightly in twenty twenty three,

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Speaker 1: and that's the economic power of a women. David Weston

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Speaker 1: ask Professor Saraon about the power and key women driving it.

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Speaker 2: I'm actually pretty inspired as I look at this year

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Speaker 2: and all the progress that's been wrought, and particularly I

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Speaker 2: think it and I talk about this and the piece,

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Speaker 2: but if you look across fields, you see women trailblazing

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Speaker 2: and trailblazing in uniquely female ways. So if you look

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Speaker 2: at entertainment, you see Taylor Swift and the Eras Tour,

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Speaker 2: which is going to be on track to be the

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Speaker 2: highest grossing concert tour of all time. That's brought six

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Speaker 2: billion dollars to the US economy, so much so that

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Speaker 2: world leaders around the globe are begging Taylor for a

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Speaker 2: tour stop. You have Beyonce, whose tour, whose renaissance tour

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Speaker 2: has brought billions to the economy, who brings a Beyonce

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Speaker 2: bump to every city that she tours in because her

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Speaker 2: fans literally be dazzled in silver, turn up ready to

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Speaker 2: celebrate her and particularly support women own businesses in every

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Speaker 2: tour stop that they attend. You have an economic policy.

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Speaker 2: One of the steadiest hands of Biden's cabinet is Secretary Yellen,

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Speaker 2: who is the first woman, the first person to hold

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Speaker 2: the three most significant economic policy roles in the United

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Speaker 2: States as her current job Treasury Secretary, as Chairwoman of

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Speaker 2: the Council of Economic Advisors, and as Chairwoman of the

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Speaker 2: Federal Reserve. Who's at the forefront of really pushing towards

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Speaker 2: the implementation of our transition to a cleaner, greener economy.

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Speaker 2: Who is leading the IRS or working with the IRS

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Speaker 2: to modernize its technology and improve the service that tax

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Speaker 2: expeers receive.

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Speaker 3: And you have.

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Speaker 2: In the world of athletics, the Spanish women's national team

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Speaker 2: which won its first World Cup this year, but if anything,

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Speaker 2: that's sort of a small victory relative to what it's

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Speaker 2: been able to accomplish off the field. In the wake

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Speaker 2: of sexual assault that players experience. The players turn this

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Speaker 2: into an opportunity to really leverage and fight very deeply

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Speaker 2: for equal pay, for women's rights, and to kind of

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Speaker 2: push for the types of progress that for too long

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Speaker 2: it's been very hard to attain, and so in this year,

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Speaker 2: I think that we're kind of at the precipice of

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Speaker 2: something really exciting in the economy, which is growth and

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Speaker 2: our understanding of that growth being propelled by women.

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Speaker 4: All of that is terribly important and really exciting. And

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Speaker 4: you left out the first time in history when a

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Speaker 4: woman by herself got the Nobel Prize in Economic Sciences,

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Speaker 4: and Claudia Golden somebody I believe you've worked with. So

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Speaker 4: tell us about that and why that's so important, and

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Speaker 4: you know it's.

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Speaker 2: So Claudia Golden is a superstar and became this year,

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Speaker 2: as you point out, David, the first solo female recipient

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Speaker 2: of the Nobel Prize.

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Speaker 3: It's even more exciting though.

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Speaker 2: That her Nobel is for her work on understanding women's

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Speaker 2: role in the labor force. And in particular, when Claudia

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Speaker 2: was coming up as an economist she graduated from the

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Speaker 2: University of Chicago in nineteen seventy two, there weren't that

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Speaker 2: many female economists, and so as we became interested in

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Speaker 2: the study of the family and family economics, Claudia realized

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Speaker 2: there was an incredibly important story that was missing from

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Speaker 2: not being told and that story was about the role

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Speaker 2: of the wife and the mother and the ways in

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Speaker 2: which social norms and expectations and access to certain types

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Speaker 2: of progress would really come with the kind of gender

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Speaker 2: equity that so far in the economy we haven't been.

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Speaker 3: Able to see.

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Speaker 2: And Claudia's work has really inspired a legion of economists

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Speaker 2: to do economic history who study women's roles, and also

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Speaker 2: has really pushed us to understand the ways in which

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Speaker 2: the workforce can evolve most usefully exactly to.

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Speaker 3: Attain that type of equity.

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Speaker 2: And one of the bright spots actually of COVID that

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Speaker 2: Claudia has pointed out in her recent work is that

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Speaker 2: maybe exactly the type of flexibility that's giving us the

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Speaker 2: opportunity to have this interview on Zoom today is exactly

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Speaker 2: what's critical to allowing the world to move to a

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Speaker 2: place where it creates economic environments and work a labor

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Speaker 2: force that's really supportive of all of its members, and

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Speaker 2: that includes women.

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Speaker 4: So I want to jump back if we could, Janet Yellen,

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Speaker 4: who has had, as you say, a truly extraordinary career

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Speaker 4: and no doubt about it, you said, a steady hand

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Speaker 4: in governing the economy. Is it a successful instead of

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Speaker 4: a hand because right now there are a lot of

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Speaker 4: Americans who are not very satisfied with where they think

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Speaker 4: the economy is is exceeding.

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Speaker 2: Now I kind of find this year and it's kind

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Speaker 2: of how I started the piece, which is, there's been

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Speaker 2: a lot that's been discussed about the ways in which

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Speaker 2: consumers are really facing and have been facing for many years,

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Speaker 2: an incredibly difficult economic environment. We've dealt with the shock

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Speaker 2: of a once in a generation pandemic in COVID, We've

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Speaker 2: dealt with hopefully once in our lifetimes. Frankly, we've dealt

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Speaker 2: with the world of rising inflation and higher prices for consumers,

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Speaker 2: and now finally prices are starting to come down, inflation

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Speaker 2: is starting to come down, and you're in a world

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Speaker 2: where unemployment is still low, and yet there is this

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Speaker 2: lack there is this sense of lack of optimism about

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Speaker 2: the economy, and I suspect that that's totally understandable, and

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Speaker 2: that's actually where what you would expect in the situation

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Speaker 2: that you would expect us to be in given this

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Speaker 2: shock that we have suffered from. That said, this administration

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Speaker 2: and Secretary Yellen is at the forefront of this has

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Speaker 2: really been working to try and make the situation for

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Speaker 2: American consumers and American workers and improved one inflation, as

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Speaker 2: I mentioned, is falling. You're in a situation where Secretary

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Speaker 2: Yellen in particular has been an ambassador for the administration

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Speaker 2: across the globe.

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Speaker 3: And one of the points that I make in.

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Speaker 2: The piece is that she kind of led an effort

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Speaker 2: to have a conversation in China this summer that predated

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Speaker 2: an incredibly important moment for President Biden and Hi Jinping.

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Speaker 2: And I really think that the way in which she

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Speaker 2: has leveraged her understanding of how the economy works, her understanding, frankly,

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Speaker 2: and her deep empathy for the American people, and her

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Speaker 2: stature abroad has made her tenure incredibly successful. And we're all, frankly,

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Speaker 2: very lucky to have.

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Speaker 4: Through this rom Natasha, you lay out a lot of

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Speaker 4: the success story of twenty twenty three four women. Let's

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Speaker 4: talk about an area where it looks like there's a

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Speaker 4: lot of progress that you get to be made, and

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Speaker 4: that's the c suite at the CEO level. You have

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Speaker 4: including your piece, Mary Bara, who in many usays the

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Speaker 4: dean of the female CEO. She's now been there ten

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Speaker 4: years as CEO. She's had a bit of a rough year,

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Speaker 4: as you point out explained, but she really has done

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Speaker 4: many people think of really monumental work at General Motors

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Speaker 4: at the same time. Last time I checked, if you

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Speaker 4: look at the S and P five hundred, it's still

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Speaker 4: down around ten percent of the S and P five hundred.

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Speaker 4: It has women a job. We now finally have Jane Fraser,

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Speaker 4: a woman running a major bank. But if you look

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Speaker 4: on Wall Street, you look around the C suites, generally,

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Speaker 4: there's a lot of progress that yet to be made,

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Speaker 4: is there not?

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Speaker 2: There absolutely is, and you're right that number is around

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Speaker 2: it's slightly above ten percent. It's been rising, so that's

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Speaker 2: exciting to see. But we've been in a world where

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Speaker 2: Mary Barra is the first woman to run an automobile manufacturer,

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Speaker 2: Jane Frasier is running a very significant US bank. We're

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Speaker 2: in a world in which you're starting to see progress

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Speaker 2: on dimensions that are incredibly important, and it's an exciting world.

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Speaker 2: I also talk in the piece about Barbie, and I

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Speaker 2: say that it's been really important for it. Barbie was

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Speaker 2: the largest grossing film of the year. Barbie kind of

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Speaker 2: celebrates and embraces the messiness of Barbie herself, the doll,

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Speaker 2: the ways in which the doll created unrealistic expectations for

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Speaker 2: women about what they should look like, but also the

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Speaker 2: ways in which it was exciting for young girls to

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Speaker 2: be able to look at Barbie's and see themselves and

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Speaker 2: imagine themselves as Supreme Court justices, and imagine themselves as

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Speaker 2: business tycoons. And as you look at Mary Bara and

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Speaker 2: as you look at sort of female executives for at large,

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Speaker 2: it is really exciting for women like me to be

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Speaker 2: able to look to them, granted that their tenures are rocky.

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Speaker 3: It's really difficult to transition.

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Speaker 2: The world to a green economy with automobiles being manufactured

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Speaker 2: fully electrically. In her mind by twenty thirty five, it's

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Speaker 2: hard to look at that world and not be sort.

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Speaker 3: Of incredibly excited about.

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Speaker 2: The fact that this transition is being led by women,

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Speaker 2: and it's being led by women who embrace and sort

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Speaker 2: of celebrate the fact that they are women, and that

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Speaker 2: grants them a particular window into the American consumer, into

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Speaker 2: the American labor force, but also particular insights about the

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Speaker 2: ways in which you can lead and lead successfully, and

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Speaker 2: that was.

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Speaker 1: Natasha Saren, Associate Professor at Yale Law School. You can

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Speaker 1: watch More Wall Street week Fridays at six pm Eastern