The National Women’s Law Center fights for gender justice — including in the tax code, where decisions about who pays quietly determine whether the country can afford child care, paid leave, and health care. E11 Group built Tax the Patriarchy, an interactive tool that turns that dense debate into a playful, hands-on experience: tax the wealthy fairly, then go shopping with the revenue you raise.
The Challenge
Tax policy is where most people’s eyes glaze over — yet it decides what we can fund for families. NWLC needed to make the trade-offs tangible: to let anyone feel, in a few clicks, how taxing billionaires and corporations fairly could pay for the things people need — without a policy lecture or a spreadsheet.
What We Did
We designed and built an interactive, gamified calculator in two acts. First, choose how to make the wealthy pay their fair share — six real revenue options, from raising the corporate rate to 28% ($1.35 trillion over ten years) to taxing billionaires’ investment income — with a running total that updates live as you select.
Then the fun part: go shopping. Spend the revenue you raised across ten public investments — child care, paid family and medical leave, housing, health care, baby bonds, and more — against a live budget that keeps you honest. A “set the mood” music player and one-click social sharing with pre-written messages make it playful to use and easy to spread. The result is a fast, responsive tool that turns dry tax policy into something people can actually feel.
