The 29-year-old American singer-songwriter Taylor Swift is undeniably one of the most successful female musicians up to date. In fact, Forbes Magazine hailed her the number 1 highest-paid celebrity this year, and that’s already the second time she received that recognition.
Taylor Swift’s Career
Swift knew that she was meant to be in the music industry at a very young age. When she was just fourteen years old, she took a leap of faith to pursue a career in country music and became the youngest musician to close a music deal with Sony/ATV Music Publishing. She collaborated with the veteran songwriters of the Music Row including Troy Verges, Brett James, Brett Beavers, Mac McAnally, The Warren Brothers, and Liz Rose.
However, she immediately left RCA Records because she felt like her visions weren’t aligning with the company’s plans for her. In 2005, her path crossed with Scott Borchetta who was working as an executive at DreamWorks Records by that time.
Borchetta was already planning to establish his own independent record label when she met the young musician. Swift became one of the pioneer artists of Borchetta’s Big Machine Records, and her father invested $120,000 worth of stake with the company.
Inequality Between Genders
When Swift was just starting to become successful in the music industry, she didn’t recognize the gap between genders. In her latest interview, she confessed the issue of gender inequality wasn’t really clear to her.
She just realized the real weight of it when she reached the top of the ladder. Swift said her colleagues used to see her as a cute reflection of her male co-workers’ daughters and nieces, but not a professional associate.
Swift said, at first, you’ll be blinded with the applauses and praises they give because they find it charming that a girl could write hit songs. But when she began filling up stadiums, their perception of her changed. That’s when you would realize that there’s still a huge gap between men and women. Despite being one of the wealthiest in her field, she still felt the impact of the gender pay gap.
Melinda Gates, one of the most powerful female personalities, projected that it might take 208 more years before the inequality between genders would completely vanish. As for the present day, the world requires a woman to contribute more than what’s expected to earn respect in leadership, while the size of their paychecks is smaller compared to men in the industry.
Swift also said that the higher you climb the ladder, the clearer you see how big the gap is.
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