Feminism at the Heart of Democracy: Dr. C. Nicole Mason
November 14th, 2024
”There's a direct line between feminism and democracy.”
We discuss the intersection of feminism and democracy and discover how the egalitarian underpinnings of feminism are fundamental to an equal society. Abortion bans illustrate this well. “Any time there's a conflict between the Constitution and someone's personal bodily autonomy and the subject of rights under the law, that is anti-democratic.”
Dr. C. Nicole Mason is the founder and president of Future Forward Women, a project at the New York Women’s Foundation.
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Credits:
Host: Mila Atmos
Guest: Dr. C. Nicole Mason
Executive Producer: Mila Atmos
Producer: Zack Travis
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Nicole Mason Transcript
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Mila Atmos: [00:00:48] Welcome to Future Hindsight, a podcast on a mission to spark civic action. I'm your host, Mila Atmos. I'm a global citizen based in New York City, and I'm deeply curious about the way our society works. So each week I bring you conversations to cut through the confusion around today's most important civic issues and share clear, actionable ways for us to build a brighter future together. After all, democracy is not a spectator sport. Tomorrow starts right now.
In a democracy, we widely assume that women have equal rights and equal opportunity. But we all know that's not true right here in the United States. So why do we assume this? And what's the actual truth? Since we are a pro-democracy podcast, we wanted to learn more about the intersection of feminism and democracy and to take stock of where we are and where we have yet to go.
We're joined by Doctor C Nicole Mason. She's the founder and president of Future Forward Women, a legislative exchange and policy network committed to advancing progressive public policies at the state and federal levels. Future Forward Women is a project at the New York Women's Foundation. Previously, she served as the president and chief executive of the Institute for Women's Policy Research. Welcome, Nicole. Thank you for joining us.
Dr C Nicole Mason: [00:02:19] Thank you. I'm so excited to be here. This is a really great moment.
Mila Atmos: [00:02:25] So we have never talked about feminism explicitly on the podcast. And we are so excited to do it now in a moment when -- it's not funny -- but in a moment when women are being aggressively pushed back into the shadows and recast as belonging strictly in the private sphere. And so I feel like we need to start with the basics and define feminism in this moment. How would you define feminism today to someone who has no preconceptions, like, let's get down to earth and explain it like I'm five.
Dr C Nicole Mason: [00:02:58] So at a very basic level, feminism is about rights, equal rights. And for me, it's about women being able to pursue their own goals in society without any encumbrances or any restrictions. And that's not ever been the case for women. So I've spent the last 20, 25 years really thinking about how do we secure for women their full bundle of rights in society.
Mila Atmos: [00:03:31] Yeah. Excellent. So, well, how is feminism then fundamental to the idea of democracy and egalitarianism? Because right now when we talk about pay equity or women's suffrage or abortion rights, I feel like we're missing what the very basic tenets are underlying those surface issues. I mean, they're not on the surface because of course, they're about our rights, but I think people don't think about them being intricately woven together.
Dr C Nicole Mason: [00:03:57] There's a direct line between feminism and democracy. So when we think about the early feminist movement, it was about securing rights. Women were not considered a part of society. We couldn't even vote, and we were mostly kept in the private sphere. And so what women started to do in the 1800s is demand rights in society as full subjects under the law. So that's what we're talking about. And that's democracy. That's liberalism, that's all those things. Fast forward to around the 1960s and 1970s. So we're still talking about rights, but what happens is that women become an issue, and that's different from a right. So like, I have the right to bodily autonomy is different than bodily autonomy is an issue. Because when it becomes an issue, everybody has a say on it. We debate women's issues and women's rights like the defense budget, like, you know, climate change. And we don't debate men's bodily autonomy in the same way. We assume that they have rights under the law. We don't do the same thing for women.
Mila Atmos: [00:05:01] That's really fascinating. I have not thought about it that way by making women's rights a separate issue from women. So you could talk about those things in isolation, as if the woman is not attached.
Dr C Nicole Mason: [00:05:14] Or say like, okay, well, men are weighing in on women's bodies or you sort of debating like, oh, like, is domestic violence right or wrong? Or like, does a woman have a right to protection? You're like, what is going on here? And that happened around 1970s around Roe versus Wade. Actually, the ruling is when we start to frame, you know, very clearly women's rights as issues as opposed to like, I'm pulling on the Constitution and saying because of the Constitution, I'm guaranteed the same rights as men or anyone else in society. Full stop.
Mila Atmos: [00:05:48] Mhm, mhm. Well, I'm curious about how you think about the Equal Rights Amendment then. Because if you're talking about rights and I feel like the Equal Rights Amendment should have passed and it still hasn't, and for whatever reason, I mean, they're complicated reasons. We had a whole episode about it. But in what way, if we could in fact enshrine the Equal Rights Amendment, make it pass and actually make it work, what would that look like?
Dr C Nicole Mason: [00:06:16] So the Equal Rights Amendment, we've been trying to get it passed for some time. You know, that everybody listening should know that. So when the Equal Rights Amendment Amendment was first introduced, women had fewer rights and fewer liberties. Since then, we've gotten a lot of things. So we have a fuller bundle of rights than we had when it was first introduced. Now, there are many states who have introduced state level ERAs. Texas even has one. So I just want to let you know that. So there's a gap between whether a state has a law on the books and you know what happens and how the law is implemented. So Texas is, you know, very much a very a hostile state for women to live in because of abortion bans and their restrictions. But they do have an equal rights Amendment on the books. So I really want to look at the gap between the laws that we put on the books and what's really happening in society and culture. And for me, there's a really big lag there.
Mila Atmos: [00:07:16] Yeah, it's not the same for sure. Dr C Nicole Mason: [00:07:18] It's not the same.
Mila Atmos: [00:07:19] It's not the same. Although we have come a long way. Dr C Nicole Mason: [00:07:20] We've come a long way. We have a lot I mean,
comparatively I mean I don't know...
Mila Atmos: [00:07:25] But we're comparing, let's say.Dr C Nicole Mason: [00:07:26] I don't even know. Hell, I don't know. What are we comparing it to?
Mila Atmos: [00:07:30] It's been well, let's compare it to even the 60s or 70s where, you know, women couldn't get their own credit cards or, you know, couldn't own property still in many places, or had to get permission from their husbands to get birth control. These kinds of things. So we've come a long way.
Dr C Nicole Mason: [00:07:44] Yeah. But.
Mila Atmos: [00:07:45] And that's, you know, that's not that long ago. But if you were to talk about the fruits of feminism. Tell us about the success stories that you love to talk about.
Dr C Nicole Mason: [00:07:54] So, you know, I've taught on and off for many years, and my last teaching gig was at Georgetown University teaching women's studies. And so it's like a mix of kids who come in there. And one of the things I say on the first day, because essentially I'm trying to convince them that, like, women matter, women's issues matters, women's rights matter. And so I say, well, you know, all the things that you enjoy as women, whether it's reproductive rights when we had Roe; having a credit card; being able to buy a house in your own name, you can thank feminists for that. And that kind of shifts the conversation because they're like, oh my goodness, I didn't know that. I didn't know that, you know, before 1960 or 1970 or in the 70s, women couldn't own their own house or couldn't have their own credit card. Or, you know, thank feminists for the Violence Against Women Act. And so I try to, like, bring it down to very basic experiences that they can understand. There's a lot of things that I think we take for granted that you have feminists to thank who have been on the front lines, and
really, there's a lot of opposition. We see it now. It's very regressive. It's very hostile towards really the only thing I think we're asking for is to be treated equally under the law and not have society, you know, be impeding on those rights. And for some reason, that seems to be very problematic, like it seems like to be an issue.
Mila Atmos: [00:09:21] Yeah. I cannot, of course, explain why because I'm also a woman and it befuddles me as well. But I think it's just so, I think it's just so deeply ingrained that, you know. So I have two children, one is 20 and the other one is 17. And my 20 year old, when he was in, when he was in preschool, he came home one day and he said something about I don't even remember what it was. But he said, oh, but a girl can't do that, right? And I thought, what? Wait, where did you learn this? You learned this at preschool? Stop. You know, but I think it's just so.
Dr C Nicole Mason: [00:09:56] It's in the water. Mila Atmos: [00:09:57] It's in the water.
Dr C Nicole Mason: [00:09:58] It's in the water. Mila Atmos: [00:09:58] It's in then water.Dr C Nicole Mason: [00:09:59] It's a part of the culture. Like a couple of years ago, I did an experiment with kids on the pay gap. And, you know, they did the same job, and then they were paid in candy. But like, the boys got more and the girls got less. And the boys sort of said like, yeah, that's right. We worked harder. And it was like, what are you? You're, you're seven! But they had rationalized already. And then, you know, some kids said, oh, that's not fair. Or like what's going on, but it starts really early because it's really in the waters and everything they see. It's sort of the messages that they receive, right? You know, it's reinforced every day, everywhere.
Mila Atmos: [00:10:37] Yeah. We cannot escape it. Dr C Nicole Mason: [00:10:38] No.
Mila Atmos: [00:10:39] But you just mentioned your experiment on pay equity. And that to me, of course, is the most obvious gap, is pay equity, or at least that's the most obvious gap in a sense that we can measure it. It's it's there, although people contest it, of course. And on average, we know that women make $0.84 to the dollar of every man. And that is even worse if you are a Black woman or a Latina woman. And a lot of what we hear about is that what feminism should achieve, at the very least, is equal income for equal work, or have more women in the c-suites of big corporations. And I feel like, is that maybe a limited view on how to fix pay inequity? Or how do you think about if we're just talking about this piece, which of course, you can't exactly. It's not really separable. How do you think about it? How do you approach it?
Dr C Nicole Mason: [00:11:28] Well, I mean, at the very least, you should be paid equal pay for equal work. That should go without saying. Look, when I think about how we approach these issues around equal pay and equal work, it's really hard to undo what's been done. So there's a history of this country that women, you know, stay at home men are the primary caretakers, so they're the ones that should be making the most money. But we know that that's no longer the case. There's a big, significant number of women who are the primary breadwinners in their family. But still, culturally, there's a gap between what is really happening in our reality. And, you know, what we've been doing in practice. So we're still behaving like a 1950s sort of Mad Man sort of era, when that's not been our reality for like at least 30 years or so. So for me, when I think about, you know, there's structural changes, like you have to make the policies that do the corrections. But there's also the cultural piece, which I think hasn't caught up. And in fact, it's regressing. We've seen a lot of backlash, especially when we think about trends like Tradwives and even JD Vance talking about where women belong and framing family in a particular way. Those all contribute to ideas and beliefs about women's worth, not only in society but also in the workplace.
Mila Atmos: [00:12:52] Mhm. I want to talk about Tradwives a little bit down the line. But since you're the president of Future Forward Women, what are the policies that you're advancing in this moment and why. And just to remind the listener I mentioned this at the top, that Future Forward Women is a legislative exchange and policy network. And so you help lawmakers think about and implement public policies at the state and federal level.
Dr C Nicole Mason: [00:13:19] Right. So it's you know, what we've been talking about. So it's paid sick leave and family leave. It's universal childcare. It's equal pay for equal work, you know, reproductive rights and autonomy for all women, regardless of whether or not they're married or not. All these things together ensure that women have freedom and they can exercise that freedom in democracy. And when those freedoms are limited, women are not free. So when women are not earning what they should earn, when women don't have bodily autonomy and able to decide when they want to start a family, they're constrained by childcare and all these other things. They can't really be fully realized in society. They can't even participate fully. And I think that's that's intentional. I mean, I don't want to go down a rabbit hole of conspiracy rabbit hole, but I do think that the absence of this policy sort of signals, you know, what we value in society and how much we value women in society as well.
Mila Atmos: [00:14:21] Yeah. Well, we clearly don't value women very much. Dr C Nicole Mason: [00:14:24] I mean, you said it, I didn't. [laughter]
Mila Atmos: [00:14:27] I mean, the fact that we still have not been able, that that Congress still has not been able to re-pass the Violence Against Women Act. It's just shameful, first of all. But secondly, it just tells you so much about how lawmakers think about women at the very least, even if you cannot generalize that across the population in the United States.
Dr C Nicole Mason: [00:14:45] You know, so every time there's something that fails, whether it's a Violence Against Women Act or, you know, to get reappropriation funds or the Build Back Better Act where we're asking for child care, people always want some complicated answer about like, why? Like, tell us why. I'm sure there's some like, big answer. And I said, no. Actually, the answer is like men in Congress, like old white men in Congress who hold a lot of power, and they're making the decisions for all of us. So when I think about democracy, I would like to say that we're not living in a representative democracy, because if we were, then the priorities of women and the priorities of the people who actually live in society would be represented more fully.
Mila Atmos: [00:15:29] Mhm. I mean, I think I agree that representation matters, but representation is not the be all and end all, and it doesn't solve those problems because there are women who are not pro-women, you know, and who will vote...
Dr C Nicole Mason: [00:15:43] Yeah, you know, Susan Collins, I'm looking at you, you know.
Mila Atmos: [00:15:44] Right. Like, there's so many, so many people like that. So I sometimes feel like, oh, if we had more women. But then I'm like, but.
Dr C Nicole Mason: [00:15:50] But you know what? I think... So yeah, representation does matter. But what we've never had is a 50-50 representation. So like we've never had a Congress or any legislative body for that part. I think there's maybe one legislative body that's majority women. I'm not even talking about majority women. I'm talking about parity, in Congress ever in the history of this country. So we actually don't know what that might do and what that might look like. So yes, we have a few women or 2 or 3 women, but we've never had it where there's a balance. Or we even had women who understand what it means to be a woman in society, fully engaging in real ways where they're not the only one in the room, only one in the room. It's super hard to make change. 20 of you in a room with 20 other people, probably you're going to get a little bit more done.
Mila Atmos: [00:16:41] Yeah, that's a fair point. So before your current role, you were the former president and CEO of the Institute for Women's Policy Research, and you have been for a very long time, a leading voice on pay equity and economic policies that are pro-women. So, in your experience, what have been the most successful policies in the last, say, ten years?
Dr C Nicole Mason: [00:17:05] Most successful economic policies for women. So obviously, when we think about the earned income tax credit and things like that, that provide tax incentives for working parents, those work. But I have to be really honest and say that when we think about economic policies that support women specifically, they are few and far between. The most recent policies that I would say are the pay transparency policies that have passed in states like California and New York to increase pay transparency so that, you know, employers have to disclose pay in their
companies and organizations, but also they have to post the salary range on jobs like those sorts of policies, while they've just been implemented within the last five years or so, I think will go a long way to building a more equitable workforce in terms of pay. But we're so far behind, you know, child care, I feel, is an economic policy for women, right. Universal childcare. So I can tell you, you know, I'm a mother of twins. I'm a single mother by choice. I was living in New York City. You know how expensive childcare can be in New York City. And at the time, it was consuming more than 30% of my income for child care. And I don't know what you could do with 30% of your money in your pocket for about 5 or 6 years, but that's a lot of money that goes out the door. Now, if we had universal childcare, which many other countries do, including Canada, women would be in a better financially economic position, full stop. And they would also be able to be bigger contributors in the workforce, because we know that women off ramp their careers when they become moms, or they change their career or go to a job that's more flexible, but those jobs often pay less. So I do believe childcare is a economic issue for women.
Mila Atmos: [00:19:02] Of course, of course. 100%. So you just mentioned Canada, and I'm wondering, is there a country you're like, this is the gold standard for equity.
Dr C Nicole Mason: [00:19:12] So I think Norway. I think Sweden because I'm thinking about family friendly policies. You know, the U.S. ranks really very low, even though we hold ourselves out as a model country for economic security and viability. You know, we have low unemployment right now. We have good GDP. The stock market is doing well. But then when you look at the other measures of success, like about, you know, women and pay equity, participation in the workforce and child care policies, family policies, we're like in the middle or very low. And when I think about other countries, again, I'm thinking about Sweden. I'm thinking about Norway. Canada does have some really good policies, but the United States is so far behind. So even when you say like, we've come a long way, and to me I always say compared to what, you know, like, yes, we've come a long way, but, you know, are we comparing it to how far we've come or where we should have been starting from or, you know.
Mila Atmos: [00:20:12] Yeah, women definitely have a very precarious position in the United States economy or in society at large. I have one more question about the economy before we talk about Tradwives.
Mila Atmos: [00:20:26] We'll continue with Nicole Mason in a moment. So stay with us. You won't want to miss this episode's civic spark. One small step we can all take to be more empowered and ignite collective change.
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And now let's return to my conversation with Doctor C. Nicole Mason.
Mila Atmos: [00:24:35] But so during the pandemic, which seems like eons ago but really started only four years ago, and of course, Covid is here to stay. Despite what some people may tell you, you coined a term "shecession" to describe the unemployment rate among women. Tell us more about Shecession and how are women in the workforce faring today?
Dr C Nicole Mason: [00:24:56] So when the pandemic hit, a lot of economists were really trying to figure out like what was going on and couldn't really explain it. They were explaining it like 2008 when we had the other economic downturn, and I just kept looking at the numbers and looking at who is most impacted. And I said, it's women. Women are most impacted. They're the ones leaving the workforce are the ones losing the jobs. And I had started calling it a shecession. And then I was on the call with The New York Times, and I said, I think we should just call it a shecession, because that's what's happening. And so that's how the term came about. And it actually became a framework to explain what was happening and also led to policy solutions where women were centered. I don't think if that hadn't happened, we would still be talking about it in 2008 terms, which was a very masculine frame. So fast forward to now. We're still missing a lot of those jobs that we lost during the pandemic, but women are doing better. The sectors that were most impacted hospitality, childcare, education, there's been rebounds in those sectors. But overall women are still lagging because they're playing catch up. So they've had a lot of catch up to do. And you know unemployment rates are down, but it's still uneven when we break it up by subgroups of women.
Mila Atmos: [00:26:24] So are they ever going to catch up? Because we continue to be behind. So are they are they going to catch up to where we were or, you know, it's 2024. And in a way, I feel like women are always going to get paid less in this country. I just don't see a future where pay equity is a reality. I mean, I don't want to be pessimistic, but I just don't see how. Why would we suddenly do it? You know, after all this time.
Dr C Nicole Mason: [00:26:46] You know, actually we're supposed to gain parity by 2054 for all women, but for like, Black women, it's like 100 years. And then for Latina women, it's like 200 more about that.
Mila Atmos: [00:27:00] Like who made this calculation? How do you.
Dr C Nicole Mason: [00:27:03] You just have to look I mean, I don't want to get wonkyhere, but
Mila Atmos: [00:27:06] Yeah, get a little wonky because I'm like who comes up with this math?
Dr C Nicole Mason: [00:27:08] You look, you look at the numbers. So the pay gap has only closed about $0.20 in the last, I don't know, half century. And so you look at the numbers and you project out. You say, well this is where we are here. You look at, you know, inflation, you look at the past and you sort of calculate and project out. And then like Black women are earning less than white women. And so you say, well, if it's going to take another 30 years for all women or whatever, then for Black women based on what they earn, it will take 100 years for Latino women because they earn less. It's going to take 150 years or 200 years. So it's kind of depressing. You know, it's very, it's actually very depressing. But I do think that there are things that we can do, policies that we can implement that could accelerate the closing of the pay gap, like the pay transparency laws. I think companies and corporations straighten up when there are penalties or sanctions for their behavior or and incentivizing companies that do a good job. There are some companies that do a good job at pay equity and so lifting those companies up. So there's a lot of other things. But I also think there needs to be a cultural shift. Some people actually believe that women should not earn what men earn. That's shocking. We're not those people. Like, I think it's crazy. But even when I'm
testifying on Congress, testified about equal pay, there's actually opposition that say it's okay, women don't mind earning less than men. I was like, oh...
Mila Atmos: [00:28:40] Actually we do.
Dr C Nicole Mason: [00:28:41] Yeah, actually I do. We do, we care, I care, you know, Idon't care if I want to go to brunch with my money. I want it all.
Mila Atmos: [00:28:48] I want the equal money. So yes, yes. Well, speaking of which, I think this is the right time to talk about the culture wars. Of course, this conversation would not be complete without it, and the tradwives. And it feels like there's a full out assault on women on all sides at this moment, whether that's the abortion bans or the strange rise of tradwives. And let's take them one by one, because they're not quite the same. But of course they're related. So through the feminist lens, how do you make sense of tradwives and how should feminism respond?
Dr C Nicole Mason: [00:29:19] So I went down a rabbit hole on Tradwives. Like, I don't know what happened. Like, there was an article that came across my feed and I clicked on it and I was like, what is going on? What is this? And as a feminist, I don't think we were taking it seriously in the very beginning. And I went to a conference in the UK, and I was sitting around the table with a group of feminists and I say, you know, have you guys heard about this Tradwives thing? And they just thought it was stupid. They said, oh, this is ridiculous. It's regressive. Nobody believes this. And I said, actually, it's a really big thing. But as we sat at the table and we started to unpack it, you know, we all had mixed feelings about it. And it's not only tradwives, but there's also this that's connected to it is this idea of a soft life. Like where you, you know, have no stress. The definition is like, you know, your life doesn't have stress. You just, I don't know, you shop and you bake and it's very it's very easy life. And then I thought about it and I wrote an article about it. I said, well, you know, I think I actually want a soft life. Like, I actually want a soft life. I have I've had a hard life as a woman, like raising kids, working, you know, full time. And I said, you know, I could use a little break. I mean, look at you. You. I see your face. You look like you too could have used a soft life. And so, um, and, you know, that's not what women have had in this country at all. So...
Mila Atmos: [00:30:47] I mean they still don't.
Dr C Nicole Mason: [00:30:47] We don't! We don't. We don't. We're doing like double, triple duty.
Mila Atmos: [00:30:51] I think not even the tradwives do because they have like seven kids.
Dr C Nicole Mason: [00:30:53] Well, not only have seven kids, but like, being a tradwife is a job. They're like creating content. So I was like, you're actually working. You're making this video and dressing up. You're working.
Mila Atmos: [00:31:04] So they're putting on makeup. Like as if they're not nursing the baby, you know, washing and baking because baking is work, if you ask me,
Dr C Nicole Mason: [00:31:11] You're churning milk. You're doing all like, or churning butter. Yeah. It's just you're doing all this stuff, but.
Mila Atmos: [00:31:16] It's laughable. But it's not. It's not laughable.
Dr C Nicole Mason: [00:31:17] It's not laughable because what is happening is it's an idea, right? It's a big idea that is actually not even real. It's in someone's imagination. Because women, most women in the US, have never had this life that is being projected onto them. So it feels like cosplay in many ways, and it's dangerous because you put what's happening with the tradwives and the regressiveness of it, which says that women should be in the private sphere and men belong in the public sphere of life making laws and policies. And you put that in conversation with the dangerous abortion bans and the fall of Roe versus Wade. You understand the connectivity between the culture wars and the policies that are impacting women's everyday lives. It's impossible to separate them. So that's why I said to my friends, I said, we got to pay attention to this. We can't dismiss it as some sort of silly, you know, social media trend because they are articulating a vision for women in a time where people are wondering about the value and success of feminism and thinking about whether or not it's a viable value system or a way to think about things, and especially for younger women. Right. So one of the articles that I came across that I thought was really interesting is that this woman writes in to an advice columnist and she says, "you know, I need help. My daughter
says she doesn't have to worry about her grades in high school because she's just going to get married and she's going to be a wife and a mom. And so she doesn't need school anymore." So the mom is like beside herself because she's like, this is crazy. And to me it sounds crazy, you know, like, what are you talking about? Or there's another story where a woman is going to these Harvard Business School mixers to, like, find a husband, to take care of her. So and so you're like.
Mila Atmos: [00:33:20] [laughter] I'm sorry. So many thoughts now!
Dr C Nicole Mason: [00:33:21] You think it's ridiculous, right? So like I'm like, this is ridiculous. Both scenarios. And then I think, well, let's unpack that a little bit. What's appealing about this for these young women. And what's appealing about it is that they've seen their mothers. They've seen other women struggle. You read a biography on women. It's all about struggle, about like having to knock down a brick wall, a glass ceiling, or this or that. The crying at night, the crying in the bathroom. I want a soft life. I don't want to do any of that. It seems like it's too hard. I'm not going to be paid equally. I'm going to get passed over by promotions for promotions. Why go through all of that? So... And then you see feminism failing.
Mila Atmos: [00:34:05] Yeah, talk about that because I kind of feel like everything that you said just now, like really rings true, right? Like, why bother if I'm going to get paid less? If I'm going to get passed over for this promotion? Why don't I just trap myself a rich husband and go shopping and pretend to bake and whatever, you know.
Dr C Nicole Mason: [00:34:25] Because that's what I'd be doing. That pretending.
Mila Atmos: [00:34:27] But of course, you know, I know lots of women who don't work, who are deeply unhappy and are on Prozac and look like they're comatose. So, like, nobody talks about that. But that's as if that doesn't exist. And that's very real in our society. So in your mind, what have been the failures of feminism? And when I say failures, I mean, like, is it just a failure of communication or is it the fact that we're still not equal?
Dr C Nicole Mason: [00:34:51] Well, I mean, it's...
Mila Atmos: [00:34:52] Or both?
Dr C Nicole Mason: [00:34:52] It's a hard, it's a hard slog. It's, it's very up. It's uphill. You know, we have made some progress, but I think if you were putting everything on the table, you would say, has it been worth it? Is the juice worth the squeeze or the squeeze worth the juice? Like, are we getting our return on the work that we've put in? I'm a little mixed about it. I'm not sure that we've gotten the return that I think we should have. But mainly that's because there's a lot of opposition. There's a lot of hostility to women's equality and women's rights. And so it just makes it really hard. So for me, I think one of the big turning points... There were like a few. But one of the big turning points for me was in 2016 with the candidacy of Hillary Clinton for president of the United States. And I remember thinking that, like, if feminism had anything to deliver to a generation of women, it was a woman to the highest office of the land. And we couldn't do it. And then we had another devastating loss with Roe versus Wade. And there was another one with the Build Back Better Act. So we've had these mounting, these very severe, devastating losses over, I don't know, a very short period of time. And so you look at those and you say, is it worth it? You know? I mean, it is, but like, what's the ultimate payoff? And then you have.. Enter tradwives, enter all of this other stuff that says, "hey"
Mila Atmos: [00:36:27] But don't you think that that's a result of those failures, that this could even gain traction, something like tradwives.
Dr C Nicole Mason: [00:36:33] Well it is. That's why it has gained traction because people on the one side say, well, what is this all about anyway? You know, maybe I should just do this. I think that this is a trap. Obviously -- you just talked about it -- it's not the right way. But on this side, I think there's a recalibration. There's a really there's a need to sort of think about like, well, how do we win? Like how do we win?
Mila Atmos: [00:36:56] Like what's the narrative that we're missing? I feel like there's a picture and there are holes and we don't know where the holes are. Or at least from where I'm standing, it's not clear to me where, where are the holes? And what's the disruption that we need right now to turbocharge feminism once and for all.
Dr C Nicole Mason: [00:37:09] You know what I keep saying? And I think it's true because I've been thinking about this. Because, you know, it's my job, you know.
Mila Atmos: [00:37:16] Right.
Dr C Nicole Mason: [00:37:16] But we don't have enough power. Women don't have power. Individual women have power, and they're able to exercise it in a very limited sphere of influence. In general, women don't have enough power. If we had power in equal measure that men had or the men who were in power, it would be a different game. And we just don't have power. And so the question is, how do women get power? And nobody gives power over.
Mila Atmos: [00:37:49] No. So how do you think about women getting power as a bloc.
Dr C Nicole Mason: [00:37:52] As a bloc? So I think there are a few ways that women get power. I mean, they involve like even changing the way our government functions. Like the idea that we should have parity in Congress where, you know, women are 50% of the population, we hold 50% of the seats or it's more representative. Seems lunacy, but it's not. Other countries do it. I think if we did away with things like the Electoral College when speaking of democracy, we would have a more representative democracy where, you know, you wouldn't have one party who disregards a, you know, entire groups of people, including women. So I do think there are things to do structurally that would make it fertile ground for women to have more power in society. And it's just building the public will and the imagination for those kinds of things, because right now it sounds like crazy talk. Like, what do you mean? Women should hold 50%? Because where do we go with that is like, well, are they going to be qualified women? What kind of women?
Mila Atmos: [00:38:58] Oh yes. Oh my God. That talk. The nonsense talk, you know. But it does. It doesn't die.
Dr C Nicole Mason: [00:39:03] It doesn't die.
Mila Atmos: [00:39:03] This nonsense talk does not die. It's like every time. I can't even tell you. There's so many stories. You're a woman. I'm a woman. So we have been, we have been subjected to these stories forever. Right? And it just won't go away.
Dr C Nicole Mason: [00:39:18] It won't go away. Because I was writing about this yesterday. I said, well, you know, in this most recent presidential election, I was making the the comparison between Hillary's run for president and Kamala's run for president. Hillary ran like I'm a woman. I'm breaking these, this glass ceiling. Gender was very central to her campaign. Kamala, on the other hand, it doesn't matter. Vote for me because I'm the best candidate. She doesn't talk about being a woman. She doesn't talk about her race. And Trump could not stand it. And Vance, they were like, no, no, no, look at her race. Look at her. She's a woman. Like like she's a woman. You get what I'm saying here. And she's black! Ah! You know, this is crazy. Aren't you a little racist? Aren't I a little racist? Aren't we all?
Mila Atmos: [00:40:04] Aren't we all sexist too?
Dr C Nicole Mason: [00:40:05] Aren't we all sexist? Aren't we all these things? And so they really wanted us to do it because if we had done it, it would be a referendum on whether or not a woman should be president. That's what we'd be voting on. Like, do we think we're ready for a woman president? You know, so they're trying to shift the terms of engagement.
Mila Atmos: [00:40:24] But isn't that interesting? Because that strategy of ignoring gender really didn't work to get the vice president elected. Although, of course, sexism is not the only reason that she lost. So we need to talk abortion because that's part and parcel of talking about feminism today, for sure. And we just said that abortion is of course, not the same thing exactly as Tradwives, but they are interconnected in the context of what we've discussed, like pay equity and equality of the sexes. How are abortion bans anti-democratic?
Dr C Nicole Mason: [00:40:58] So at the very basic level, when we think about liberty, when we think about freedom. When I think about freedom and democracy, I always think about it in positive and negative terms. So, you know, the freedom to make your own choices, pursue your own good and your own way, and then the freedom from
harm, the freedom from coercion. Right. That's classic liberalism. And when we think about abortion bans, it is not democratic in that way. It is really trying to restrict somebody's freedom and disallowing them from being who they are and pursuing their own good in their own way. Full stop. And so these bans are anti-democratic. You know, they frame it as anti-woman or anti-family. No. These bans are anti-democratic. Anytime there's a conflict between the Constitution and someone's personal bodily autonomy and the subject of rights under the law, that is anti-democratic. And I personally love the storytelling, but I want to engage the discussion in terms of democracy. Like, you don't do this in a democratic country, in a democratic nation. Are we a democracy or not?
Mila Atmos: [00:42:18] Yeah. Well said. So every week on Future Hindsight, I ask my guest to share a civic spark. One small step we can all take to be more empowered and ignite collective change. What's a good way to turn the insights you've shared with us today into action?
Dr C Nicole Mason: [00:42:36] Well, I always start small. So national politics, the federal level, that's what gets a lot of attention. But I am one for like starting very small, starting your community, starting on your block, having conversations, engaging your neighbors, doing for your neighbors, understanding what they may be going through or thinking about in terms of engaging. And I think if we did that more, then we would have actually a healthier national body politic. And because we don't do that and people are very disconnected even at a very, you know, community level, it's harder for us to connect up in a larger way.
Mila Atmos: [00:43:17] I agree, I agree you need to do something that's connected to your everyday life, otherwise it's meaningless. You know, it's really it's so removed it. It's like watching television, you know, it's a, it's a passive activity.
Dr C Nicole Mason: [00:43:29] It's a passive activity. And so I'm like, well there's a food bank there. There's a, you know, a community council board. There's all these other ways. And I feel like even engaging at that level gives you the confidence to engage in these bigger ways.
Mila Atmos: [00:43:43] Thank you. So last question. Looking into the future, what makes you hopeful?
Dr C Nicole Mason: [00:43:49] Well, so I'm just going to quote Martin Luther King here. And he says "the arc of the moral universe is long, but it bends towards justice." So for me, what that means is that there's no going backwards. There's only going forward. Even though it feels like we're treading water, it feels like we're being pushed back, or asked to go back to a time where, you know, women had fewer rights. Black people had fewer rights. LGBTQ IA people had fewer rights. But that's just not possible.
Mila Atmos: [00:44:21] Yeah, I like it. I like that you're so positive. Dr C Nicole Mason: [00:44:24] Yeah
Mila Atmos: [00:44:25] that you're so confident.
Dr C Nicole Mason: [00:44:26] Like after, aahhh...Mila Atmos: [00:44:26] You're not going back.
Dr C Nicole Mason: [00:44:27] After I'm, like trashing for like the last hour. I'm like. "Butalso I'm optimistic."
Mila Atmos: [00:44:33] [laughter] It's okay to be both because life is like that.Dr C Nicole Mason: [00:44:36] Life is like that. Life is like that. So I do, I am feeling very optimistic. And I think the only way you can continue to do this work, even the work that you do here, is to maintain hope and optimism and believe that we're going to get to where we say we want to go.
Mila Atmos: [00:44:52] Hear, hear. Thank you very much, Nicole, for joining us on Future Hindsight. It was really a pleasure to have you on the show.
Dr C Nicole Mason: [00:44:58] Thank you. I really enjoyed it. I love conversations like this.
Mila Atmos: [00:45:02] Doctor C Nicole Mason is the founder and president of Future Forward Women, a legislative exchange and policy network committed to advancing progressive policies at the state and federal levels.
Remember, civic action doesn't have to be complicated. It's about small steps that spark progress, like sharing this episode with a friend. So let's recap this week's civic Spark and fire up our collective power. Get to know your neighbors. It sounds simple, but if we're disconnected from our community, we really can't have a fully informed body politic. Democracy is a team sport, and it always has been.
Next time on Future Hindsight, we're joined by Varun Nikore, the Executive Director of AAPI Victory Alliance. It's an organization that works to build Asian American and Pacific Islander political power across the country, helped them exert that power, and be the margin of victory at the local, state and national levels. That's next time on Future Hindsight.
Oh, you're still here. I guess you just can't get enough of Future Hindsight. In that case, you should sign up for the newsletter. Just go to Futurehindsight.com to sign up for free. Then, every week we'll come to you.
Thanks for tuning in. And until next time, see clearly, act boldly, and spark the change you want to see.
The Democracy Group: [00:46:50] This podcast is part of the Democracy Group.