Taylor Swift's empowering speeches to remember on International Women's Day

At the International Women's Day, Taylor Swift and the message she has tried to communicate appears more relevant than ever. 

Being one of the biggest figures in the pop culture, Swift has publicly fought many battles, controversies, and stereotypes over the years which has provided a guiding light for not only women in the music industry, but generally to women around the world.   

The pop superstar, 36, has been vocal about the discrimination she has faced in the industry as a woman, as well as the weight of expectations she has had to deal with in her personal life. 

On March 8, in honour of the special day, here are some highlights of Swift's wisdom from over the years.

From Miss Americana documentary

In her 2020 documentary, the Love Story hitmaker discussed how the discrepancy between men and women pop stars influenced her song, The Man. 

“It’s a lot to process because we do exist in this society where women in entertainment are discarded in an elephant graveyard at 35. Everyone is a shiny new toy for like two years. The female artists have reinvented themselves 20 times more than the male artists. They have to or else you’re out of a job. Constantly having to reinvent, constantly finding new facets of yourself that people find to be shiny.”

From Folklore: Long Pond Studio Sessions

Later in 2020, Swift released the studio sessions with Aaron Dessner and Jack Antonoff, and discussed the inspiration for her song, mad woman, which became a female-rage anthem. 

She described "female rage" as a response to quietly absorbing male behaviour without reaction. If one reacts, one is angry, mad, or an offender trying to defend herself. 

From NYU Commencement Speech

In 2022, Swift was honoured with an honorary PhD degree, and her timeless address to the graduating students went viral at the time, and remains important. 

"In your life, you will inevitably misspeak, trust the wrong people, under-react, overreact, hurt the people who didn’t deserve it, overthink, not think at all, self sabotage, create a reality where only your experience exists, ruin perfectly good moments for yourself and others, deny any wrongdoing, not take the steps to make it right, feel very guilty, let the guilt eat at you, hit rock bottom, finally address the pain you caused, try to do better next time, rinse, repeat. And I’m not gonna lie, these mistakes will cause you to lose things," said the Grammy winner.

She continued, "I’m trying to tell you that losing things doesn’t just mean losing. A lot of the time, when we lose things, we gain things too. Every choice you make leads to the next choice which leads to the next, and I know it’s hard to know sometimes which path to take."

"There will be times in life when you need to stand up for yourself. Times when the right thing is to back down and apologise. Times when the right thing is to fight, times when the right thing is to turn and run. Times to hold on with all you have and times to let go with grace. Sometimes the right thing to do is to throw out the old schools of thought in the name of progress and reform. Sometimes the right thing to do is to listen to the wisdom of those who have come before us."

Swift concluded that although you won't know which choice leads to what consequence, the only way to find out is to be courageous enough to make a choice.