C. Nicole Mason
Title: President and CEO | Affiliation: Institute for Women’s Policy Research
In May 2020, after women accounted for more than 11 million jobs lost in one month of pandemic-related shutdowns, Mason sounded the alarm about the looming (and, a year later, still ongoing) economic disaster for women. “We should go ahead and call this a ‘shecession,’” she told the New York Times, finding a viral catchphrase for what President Biden and Vice President Kamala Harris have since recognized as “a national emergency.” But Mason, the president and chief executive of the Institute for Women’s Policy Research, a think tank devoted to economic policies affecting women, has done more than just raise awareness of the emergency and its long-term effects. She is one of several policy experts and economists whose longtime advocacy for wage equity, paid leave, and greater caregiving infrastructure has helped shape Biden’s economic agenda, including the $1.9 trillion stimulus package that expanded childcare funding and tax credits. Now the IWPR is seeing more of its research and policy recommendations reflected in Biden’s proposed American Families Plan, a caregiving bill that Mason has called “a game changer.”
