The Power Gap: How State Lines Shape the Rights and Realities of American Women
More to Her Story sits down with Dr. C. Nicole Mason, President and CEO of Future Forward Women, a policy network dedicated to building women’s political, economic, and social power and influence both in the United States and globally, to discuss a new index measuring women’s power—and what it reveals about inequality across the United States.
This interview has been lightly edited for clarity.
More to Her Story: Why do you find it important right now to have a deeper understanding of women’s power and influence across the United States?
Dr. C. Nicole Mason: I’ve been thinking about power for a while. It's no secret that we [women] have been losing a lot. And I keep trying to figure out why. What I keep coming back to, which I think a lot of people think isn’t quantifiable, is this idea that we don’t have enough power and influence. If we did have some, it wouldn’t be enough for us to elect a female president, to combat harmful policies and legislation, or to implement proactive policies.
To me, gender equality has always been about power. Women can’t talk about power or try to acquire it. Rather, it's always about being in a position to help. Men, on the other hand, don't have to do this. So, even bringing power into the conversation in a real way, about women, is very new. It's considered radical.
What I found is that, across the country, we generally lack sufficient power. Depending on where you live, some women have more power and influence than others. And it shows. Think about female economic security and wellbeing, health, and political representation. I believe all of these indicators serve as proxies for understanding women's power and influence.
More to Her Story: To measure power and influence, this report identified 18 different data indicators and nine public policies. How did you develop these indicators, and how do they help define “power” and “influence” for women, state by state?
Dr. C. Nicole Mason: I wanted to make the index something accessible. For example, everyone understands that a lack of economic power or political power directly impacts well-being. Without proper female political representation, there will be policies that are counterproductive to female efforts, as we have seen.
In that way, the indicators that I chose were intelligible, so that even if you picked it up and you're not a data wonk or a policy wonk, you could understand that these things make sense. If you live in poverty, if you have low earnings, if your family median income is low, if you are unemployed, you and everyone else understand that would be defined as a lack of economic power.
What people don’t understand is that defining economic power in terms of GDP or the stock market is misleading. And so I didn't want to use those as a proxy for understanding power for women, and I didn't want the indicators to be a sort of "gotcha" thing. I just said, if I could think about power, these are the things I would measure.
Again, I could have looked at a number of public policies, but I said, no, I want to narrow to policies that directly impact women and families. If we had more power, solutions that benefit women and families, like paid sick leave, paid transparency laws, childcare, and Medicaid expansion, would be available in all 50 states. If these sorts of policies were passed across all 50 states, it would improve women's economic security, well-being, and health outcomes across the board.
More to Her Story: During U.S. President Donald Trump’s first administration, many of his domestic policies were consequential to women's rights across a broad range of issues — from undermining access to birth control and eroding efforts to end the gender pay gap, to weakening Title IX and appointing three U.S. Supreme Court justices who were essential to overturning Roe v. Wade. What is your sense of the greatest threats to women's rights under his second administration, and how might this report further illuminate this?
Dr. C. Nicole Mason: What really is very eye-opening for me is that prior to this election, we saw what happened when Trump was president in 2016, and we sounded the alarm and said, this cannot happen again. We mobilized, we did everything, and it still wasn't enough to keep this man out of office. This twice-convicted felon, and that speaks to how much or how little power and influence we do have.
Women make up 50 percent of the U.S. population. We also have the ability to influence the people in our lives. So it's not just about women, it's about men. It's about our neighbors. It's about our communities. It's also about our ability to influence those people, as well as institutions, systems, and corporations. I don't think that there is a bottom for this administration when it comes to attacks on anybody, including women; there is no bottom.
I think returning to a time where white men are the only group of people that have a full bundle of rights in this society or have a say is the goal, and that's not hyperbole. I'm not an alarmist person; that's not my style. However, when you consider the plans and what’s happening, you can't help but see that it will be the inevitable outcome if we continue down this path. We will return at a time when many of us did not have rights, and we must ask ourselves, is that okay? Is that what we want? And I think many of us would say no, but then what are we going to do? How do we resist? And I don't like to use the word resist, because that becomes a catchphrase. But what are we going to do? I do think that this is a dangerous time for all of us, not just women, but for most of us who are not white men.
More to Her Story: How can this report be essential to thinking about the power that may be lost, the influence that may be lost, under this administration and thereafter?
Dr. C. Nicole Mason: The index should be our hope. It is a call to action. I think it could be a road map, an opportunity for us to understand just how big the gaps are. There has not been a time in history, other than about 400 years ago, when your rights were determined by state borders, meaning that if you lived in New York, you had one set of rights, but if you moved to Mississippi, you had a different set of rights. And it wasn't okay then, and it’s not okay now.
I think this report brings that into stark contrast — just literally crossing the border gives you protections, more rights, more earnings, and even better health outcomes. And crossing over can be like the difference between 10 miles or five miles — a 30-minute car ride! At least it's here in DC, Maryland, and Virginia — literally a 30-minute car ride away. For me, it's 10 minutes! I hope that reality comes into sharp focus for people who read the index, see it, and start to strategize and ask: Is this what we want? Is this okay? Is it okay to have this patchwork set of rights model that is really not benefiting any of us?
More to Her Story: The report notes that the power and influence index “presents a stark and concerning portrait of everyday women in America.” What surprised you about the different state-by-state rankings?
Dr. C. Nicole Mason: Washington, DC, always gets left out, because it’s not technically a state. But when I was looking at the states and where DC was ranking, it’s a sleeper because it’s where women have earned the most in the country. Women have high levels of educational attainment. Women are in power. The federal government’s workforce is 50 percent female. The mayor is a woman. When you look across at all the indicators, and they have proper female and family-friendly policies, you're like, “Oh, wait a minute. Nobody's talking about DC.” I thought that was pretty surprising.
But I also want to note that although DC ranked high in the index, when you disaggregate by race and ethnicity, what you see is that Black women experience high rates of poverty in the District of Columbia, and have different health outcomes than their white counterparts. In fact, in most states, women of color fare worse than their white counterparts on all indicators of well-being. I’ve done this research for quite some time, and this has always been the case.
For me, it's not only about understanding the differences between the states, but also about zooming in and seeing the differences between groups of women. That’s important for us because it tells us the enormity of the work that we have to do to close the gaps.
More to Her Story: What additional research or data collection do you believe is still needed to more comprehensively understand women's power dynamics? How would you continue the work of this report?
Dr. C. Nicole Mason: When I first started, I was looking at the overall picture of women’s power dynamics. And then I started to look at race. Where do black women have the most power and influence? Where do Latina women and Native American women? I will continue to look at the different dynamics and disaggregate the data, as I believe we must understand the differences between women and recognize that they are not a single unified group. For example, with Equal Pay Day, which we looked at last week, we ranked states based on their gender wage gaps. There is a wealth of mining that can be done with this data, and we can refine it in many different ways; we will continue to do so.
Most importantly, I hope that we will use it as a roadmap to guide our strategies, tactics, and approach to building women's power and influence across all 50 states. The data is meant to tell us where we are and to provide a benchmark. The goal is power, more female power, and more female influence. That is the goal of the report. It's not data for the sake of data.
More to Her Story: One last question for you. Are there any strategies or movements out in the world right now that give you a sense of hope for advancing women’s power and influence?
Dr. C. Nicole Mason: The U.S. could turn to other countries, especially in Latin America and in Europe, like Norway and Sweden, for guidance, getting the kind of policies that we want passed, legislation-wise, and resisting repressive regimes like the one that we are in right now. There are many lessons to be learned in this moment, as well as models that will guide us and help us reach our desired destination.
When we look at Norway and Sweden, we see that they have family-friendly policies, including paid sick leave and universal childcare. When you look at the makeup of the government, at representation, and factors that make that possible, then we see that we also need to make some changes to our systems and institutions. We’re just not going to magically get those changes.