Annabel DeChant

What will it take for America to elect a woman as president? This question has been on my mind following Trump’s win in the 2024 presidential election. 

For over 150 years, there have been women candidates in US presidential elections, and the first Black woman to run for president was in 1972. But in all this time, none have taken their seat behind the Resolute Desk. 

Many women were excited about the prospect of voting a woman to the nation’s highest office, but some now fear the nation isn’t ready to do that; one said, “I’m ready for a female president, I just don’t think that most of America is yet, and I don’t know why… I hate to think that it’s because they’re women, but all things seem to point that direction.” 

One headline after the election read, “Will a Woman Ever Be President?.” I hope the answer to the question is yes, but I fear that getting the United States of America to elect a woman as its president will be a long, grueling effort that faces fierce opposition at many points and on many fronts.

In other places, though, women have held positions as heads of government. Of UN Member States, 31% – 60 total – have had a woman as their head of government at some point in time. The first of these was Sri Lanka (then Ceylon), who in 1960 saw the beginning of the term of its first woman prime minister, Sirimavo Bandaranaike. 

Since the 1990s, more and more have had women in these positions of power, with the biggest single-year jump coming when Costa Rica, Australia, Kyrgyzstan, Trinidad and Tobago, and Slovakia had their first woman leader in 2010. 

Image Credit: Pew Research Center

While this trend is exciting, it’s clear there is still a huge gap in gender representation in the highest offices of government. Currently, there are only 17 countries with a woman as Head of Government and 19 with a woman as Head of State. Projections find that, “At the current rate, gender equality in the highest positions of power will not be reached for another 130 years.” 

Why is it so hard to get women into our highest office? The willingness to elect a woman as President seems to be going up significantly: “Surveys conducted in the U.S. since the 1970s show an increase in support for a generic female presidential candidate. Perry said similar polls taken in the 1950s showed only 52% of the population would support a female presidential candidate. In the late 1980s, that support rose to 75% and has since increased to more than 90%.” 

Yet we still don’t have one. There are, of course, many factors influencing who someone votes for, so it’s hard to see just how much of a factor gender bias plays in a woman candidate’s loss. In the 2024 presidential election, the various analyses of why Trump won have pointed to many factors, such as views on Biden’s handling of immigration and inflation, the perception that Democrats are “out-of-touch,” or the continued dedication of Trump’s MAGA base. 

When we focus on the gender issue, we are still met with many explanations and complications. Some have said that Trump took advantage of “a deep sense of male displacement,” while others think that it will need to be a conservative who becomes the first woman president. There’s also the explanation that it simply takes a lot of time to shift major societal views, “especially on issues as ingrained as gender in leadership.”

I think that something important to note is not just whether or not people are willing to vote for a woman, but what “conditions” they have for a woman. One writer summarizes the answer to the question of whether America is ready to elect a woman president as “Yes, but”: “Yes, the country is open, in some cases even eager, to a elect a female president — but she faces myriad hurdles her male counterparts do not, and with far less room for error.”

We hold women to different standards than we do men, and this means a woman has a harder time getting elected president even when we’re supposedly willing to vote for one. 

Women have to deal with the likeability versus toughness balance, the expectation for solidified qualification compared to a man being allowed to have “potential,” and societal views on things like motherhood. Further, they have to balance genuine, personal identity with the unspecific, aspirational ideal of the first woman president. 

There are still Americans who see the presidency as belonging to a man, or women as being unfit for such a position. For example, one article stated, “A male voter in the group [an anti-Trump Republican strategy group] was even more blunt, calling the presidency ‘a man’s job.’ ‘They’ve got to make tough decisions that can’t have any emotions involved,’ he said, adding with a chuckle that he wouldn’t want a female commander in chief in charge of the nuclear codes if she’s ‘having a bad day, or that time of the month, or whatever.’”

Our views on having a woman as a president may be generally progressing, but even so, gender-biased views persist and affect what we expect of a woman. It seems that the goal line for a woman is farther than it is for a man. Until they’re at the same place, how can we hope to have a woman be our President?