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The glass ceiling remains intact when it comes to the United States’ highest office.
Kamala Harris conceded the presidential election and Donald Trump will return to the White House. But data shows most voters see gender as less important to a politician’s standing than other factors.
In summer 2023, the Pew Research Center conducted a survey about women in leadership. At the time, there was not a specific female candidate on the presidential ballot. Biden was running for reelection, and although Nikki Haley was in the race, the conversation was mostly following Trump.
“We really wanted people to just react to the notion of having a female president and what that means to them,” said Juliana Horowitz, the senior associate director for social trends research at the Pew Research Center.
Researchers asked voters whether a woman would be better at handling certain policy areas than a male president. For the most part, Americans said they don’t think the gender of the candidate matters.
“People do tend to say that it’s really not about the candidate’s gender, that it’s more about the different things they stand for,” she said. “We don’t see a lot of evidence in our work that being a woman or that being a man, for that matter, is necessarily what’s driving people’s decisions.”
Horowitz said 46% of respondents overall said many Americans are not ready to elect a woman to such a high office. Only a quarter of Americans said it’s extremely or very likely they’ll see a female president in their lifetime.
“One of the things that we found is that most Americans did not think it was important to them, personally, for the United States to elect a woman president in their lifetime,” she said.
Early data from the 2024 election does show a gender gap, with women voting primarily for Harris at higher rates than men did. But Horowitz said the gender gap is not wider than what they’ve seen in previous elections.
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‘Will there ever be a woman president?’
Imani Cheers is an associate professor of mass communications and media studies at The George Washington University in D.C. Cheers said America has always grappled with dichotomies, and the country can be progressive in some ways but traditional in others.
“America has a racism and a patriarchy problem,” she said. “Will there ever be a woman president? I think so. I’m just not sure when.”
Harris could not maintain the support in battleground states that President Joe Biden earned in 2020. Cheers said she believes the economy and religious views influenced many female voters to support Trump.
Harris and other Democrats campaigned on protecting abortion rights following the Supreme Court’s ruling to overturn Roe v. Wade. In Cheers’ opinion, she said it was “incredibly disheartening” to not see backlash to the court’s decision.
Cheers talked about “moments of joy” on election night, such as Prince George’s County Executive Angela Alsobrooks being elected as Maryland’s first Black senator.
Cheers said noted the Harris campaign was put together in 100 days, while Trump had campaigned for reelection for years.
When it comes to electing the next president in 2028, she said, whether it’s a woman or a man elected, remember, “We are currently setting up for ramifications (that are) going to last generations.”
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