Why 2024 is America’s most gendered election in history

With just days to go before voting day on November 5, both Donald Trump and Kamala Harris made an open pitch to women.
On Wednesday in Wisconsin, one of the key swing states, Trump made a Hail Mary promise to protect women, “whether women like it or not”. Kamala Harris immediately seized on the comment as offensive to women by denying them autonomy. “He simply does not respect the freedom of women or the intelligence of women to know what’s in their own best interest and make decisions accordingly,” she said at an election rally in Arizona, another swing state.
The pitch and counter-pitch are easy to understand. Political pundits are calling this the “most gendered election” where women will play a decisive role in deciding who will be America’s next president.
Early voting patterns reveal that women are outnumbering men, in key states by as much as 10 percentage points, finds Politico. It’s giving anxious Democrats “newfound hope” in a campaign where gender has been the defining issue and where analysts find more women rooting for Harris with Trump having the edge over men.
Equally, it’s giving anxious moments to the Trump camp. Charlie Kirk, founder of right-wing non-profit, The Turning Point tweeted: “Early vote has been disproportionately female. If men stay at home, Kamala is president…. Men need to GO VOTE NOW.”
It’s not just abortion and reproductive rights under fire ever since 2022 when Trump’s hand-picked conservative Supreme Court judges rolled back abortion rights granted half a century ago in Roe v Wade. At last count, 13 states had banned abortion without exceptions for rape or incest and another 28 had enacted gestational limits, some as early as six weeks of pregnancy.
By imposing bans on even pregnancies where the foetus is non-viable, the US now faces a horrific rise in infant mortality. For the first time in two decades, the death of infants below a year old has risen by 7%, finds data released by the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. Equally horrific are the deaths of women dying because of the abortion ban, the latest in Texas where a pregnant teenager died after three hospital visits; although she was already miscarrying, the hospitals refused to perform a procedure since the foetus still had a heartbeat.
It’s also no longer about electing the first woman to the White House. If anything, Harris has downplayed her gender and the historic possibility of bringing down a massive glass ceiling—one that Hillary Clinton failed to do eight years ago. Unlike Hillary, there are no white pant-suits for Harris, white being the colour of the suffragettes. She rarely mentions her gender, and didn’t bring it up even during her sole presidential debate with Trump.
That hasn’t stopped others from reminding women of the grim choice they face: A woman who as public prosecutor made a career of providing justice against men like Trump (“I know his type”, she said back in July when she had just taken over the campaign) versus a man accused of sexual assault by over two dozen women and who’s had to pay millions of dollars in defamation costs awarded to a woman who said he had raped her in the nineties (Trump has appealed that decision).
Earlier this week, Michelle Obama, the former first lady, issued an impassioned appeal to American men to “take our lives seriously” and consider what would happen to women’s healthcare, and not just abortion rights, if Trump were to return to power. She was scathing also about the double standards in people choosing to ignore Trump’s “gross incompetence while asking Kamala to dazzle us at every turn”.
And then there’s the crucial support of former Wyoming Republican representative Liz Cheney who has openly sided with Harris and is reminding women to vote with their conscience. “You can vote,” she said, “And not ever have to say a word to anybody.”
Trump’s response was true to type when he called Cheney, a former aide, a “war hawk” who should have guns aimed at her.
The polls find a widening gender gap with women gravitating towards Harris and men pivoting to Trump.
This gap is most stark among younger voters. One recent poll found that 69% of women aged between 18 and 29 favour Harris, compared to 45% of men of the same age group rooting for Trump.
The answer to this gap lies in the economy. In 1980, finds analysis published earlier this week in New York Times’ The Upshot, white men without a college degree made more money than the average American worker. But as the economy shifted away from manufacturing to services and knowledge work, incomes of lesser educated white men also fell to well below that of the average American worker and “white men without a degree have been surpassed in income by college-educated women.”
The loss of income also brought with it a loss in hierarchy and by extension, prestige. Jobs once valued, factory foreman for instance, are now below the pecking order of say, bar tenders and physical therapists. And those men most impacted by the economic shifts live in states like Wisconsin, Michigan and Pennsylvania – states that are now crucial to the election outcome.
By harking back to conventional notions of masculinity and family, Donald Trump is tapping into a primal male insecurity about changing times where women are increasingly challenging and calling out patriarchy.
A win for Harris will reverberate across the world where women’s political leadership has more or less stagnated with just 0.4% growth in 2023 over the previous year and where gender equality has declined or remained the same in 40% of countries, according to Equal Measures 2030.
In a world of hyper-masculine leadership—Putin, Erdogan come to mind—President Kamala Harris has a nice ring to it. It’s time for America to break that final glass ceiling.
[I wrote in an earlier column on why Kamala Harris is the voice the world needs.]

The following article is an excerpt from this week’s HT Mind the Gap. Subscribe here.