‘A slap in the face.’ For many US women, Harris loss to Trump feels personal.

Krissy Fraelich was “shocked” by the election results. Not only that Donald Trump won, but that he won so decisively. She saw it as a strike against women’s rights, particularly reproductive rights, and as a blow to her hope to see a woman in the Oval Office. Twice now, American voters have chosen Mr. Trump over a woman for the presidency.

“It’s a slap in the face,” says the professional actor from Springfield, Pennsylvania. “I had my 25-year-old daughter call me in tears from Florida and say, ‘Why does America hate women so much?’”

Across the United States, many women are reporting feeling devastated, pained, and fearful of Mr. Trump’s return to the White House. They wonder how his supporters – 45% of whom are women – voted for a man found liable for sexual abuse, and who coarsely insults women and brags about overturning Roe v. Wade.

What does it mean that Mr. Trump defeated Hillary Clinton in 2016 and returned in 2024 to trounce Vice President Kamala Harris? Will a woman ever break “the highest, hardest glass ceiling,” as Mrs. Clinton describes it?

Women are indeed electable, as evidenced by Mrs. Clinton’s winning the popular vote eight years ago, says Debbie Walsh, director of the Center for American Women and Politics at Rutgers University. Last year, women held a record number of seats in Congress (151, or 28%), and with this election women now hold a record number of governorships (13).

This week, Mr. Trump announced his campaign manager, Susie Wiles, will be his White House chief of staff – the first woman ever to hold that job.

Still, says Ms. Walsh, when women like Mrs. Clinton and Ms. Harris run for president, they are trying to disrupt the notion of who can hold the most powerful position on the planet – one long associated with masculinity and, except for President Barack Obama, white men.

“There are absolutely people out there who are not comfortable with women holding positions of leadership like that,” says Ms. Walsh. She adds, “Donald Trump fed into, in a lot of his rhetoric, that unease that some people are willing to talk about, and some people don’t want to talk about.”

In his criticisms of Ms. Harris, Mr. Trump ridiculed her as having a “low IQ” and said she would get “overwhelmed” and “melt down” going up against male authoritarian leaders. Last week, he laughed at a rallygoer’s shout that Ms. Harris “worked on the corner” – a reference to prostitution.

“This place is amazing,” he said to the cheering crowd. “Just remember, it’s other people saying it. It’s not me.” Similarly, in his final rally, he called former House Speaker Nancy Pelosi an “evil, sick, crazy” and then mouthed the “B” word. “It starts with a ‘B,’ but I won’t say it,” he said. He added: “I want to say it,” which got some of the roaring crowd chanting the word.

Exploiting or avoiding gender stereotypes?

Mr. Trump has leaned heavily into masculinity, and successfully drove up his support among men, particularly Latino men. He did targeted interviews and appeared at football games and mixed martial arts fights. Pro wrestler Hulk Hogan ripped off his shirt at the Republican nominating convention. While most candidates look to expand their base, says Ms. Walsh, the Trump campaign focused narrowly on strengthening its appeal to men. “He’s made a decision that [women] are not voters that are going to be there for him.”

Unlike Mrs. Clinton, who leaned into her gender during her campaign, Ms. Harris played down her candidacy as a woman – the daughter of a Jamaican father and an Indian mother. Instead, she stressed women’s rights, particularly reproductive rights. She criticized Mr. Trump as the man who took those rights away with his Supreme Court appointments, and warned that, if elected, he would sign a national abortion ban.

On Election Day, Julianne DeCosterd, a student at Montana State University, stood in line for five hours to vote for both Ms. Harris and for a ballot measure anchoring the right to an abortion in the state constitution. Ms. DeCosterd said that she was tired, hungry, cold, and under the weather. But she stuck it out – because she said she was “really bothered” by the idea of women not having a choice in whether to start a family.

“I definitely wanted to vote to allow abortion to be available in Montana,” she said via text.

The measure passed in the ruby-red state, but not with the help of Piper Butler, another student at Montana State who helped easily elect Mr. Trump in Big Sky Country. She voted against the abortion measure and appreciates that the former president helped send abortion back to the states to decide. That’s a kind of choice, says Ms. Butler, who believes that God has a plan “for every single little individual” but also grants freedom of choice.

Referencing the 2005 “Access Hollywood” tape, in which Mr. Trump boasted crudely about grabbing women by the genitals, she says, “Obviously, no one wants to hear that. Nobody at all.” But when picking the country’s leader, Ms. Butler put her emotions aside and focused on which candidate had the best policies. She believes that Mr. Trump will lower gas and housing prices and will exhibit pride in his country. And she’s “highly doubtful” he’ll implement a national abortion ban, which he says he’s against.

Despite Ms. Harris’s efforts to mobilize women around reproductive rights, she ultimately won a smaller share of female voters than Joe Biden in 2020 and Mrs. Clinton in 2016.

Sexism or headwinds?

Both women presidential candidates carried baggage and faced headwinds, says Dianne Bystrom, director emerita of the Center for Women and Politics at Iowa State University. Mrs. Clinton contended with investigations of her work and her husband’s, as well as his infidelities and impeachment. Ms. Harris got off to a late start, was not vetted by voters through a primary, and had the challenging task of separating herself from an unpopular administration – particularly her association with skyrocketing illegal immigration.

At the same time, “we still live in a sexist society,” says Dr. Bystrom. “This election displays that.” She adds that Ms. Harris, as a woman of color, faced a “double whammy” of both sexism and racism.

She points to a Pew Research Center poll from last year in which only 1 in 4 American adults said it’s extremely or very likely that the U.S. will elect a woman president in their lifetime. They cited gender discrimination, Americans not being ready to elect a woman to higher office, and women having to do more to prove themselves than men. While Democratic presidential candidates have won the women’s vote overall since 1992, that’s largely because of women of color. A majority of white women have voted for Republicans in every presidential election for the past 20 years – including this one.

Mr. Trump’s polarizing character and boorish rhetoric about women have contributed to his low favorability ratings: More than half of voters (53%) view him unfavorably, according to exit polls. But even if they don’t like him, Americans know what they’re getting, and many are willing to support him. 

“Donald Trump makes misogynist remarks. Donald Trump does not have a good history when it comes to how he treats women. But to say that makes a voter who supports him also misogynist, I think, is a leap too far,” says political scientist Amy Black, who specializes in women and politics as a professor at Wheaton College in Illinois.

In this election, the opportunity to elect the nation’s first female president was not a high motivator, according to AP VoteCast, a national survey of voters. Only about 1 in 10 voters said that was the most critical factor determining their vote.

Traditional gender roles, “a willingness to call the kettle black,” and lowering grocery store prices were the top issues for Susan Inveninato, a Trump voter shopping at a grocery store in Whitemarsh Island, Georgia, after the election. “These days, if it’s not on sale, it don’t get bought,” she says.

What hurt Ms. Harris the most with Ms. Inveninato was her failure to separate her cultural and economic policies from President Biden’s – including her support for transgender rights, which, in Ms. Inveninato’s view, creates inequalities for women in sports.

“In the end, Kamala never really focused on what she was specifically going to do differently from Biden to help Americans across the board when it comes to food costs and taxes,” she says.

In Milledgeville, Georgia, Jasmine Daniels, a 20-something restaurant worker, says that she would like to see a woman as president. And she liked Ms. Harris’ stands on many of the issues important to her – including reproductive rights and gender equality. Yet economic concerns ultimately pushed Ms. Daniels toward voting for Mr. Trump, whose character she sometimes questions.

“It was a tough choice: morality versus economical,” she says. “I chose economical.”