BY SOUMANOU SALIFOU

In November 2024, 105 years after the passage of the 19th Amendment to the U.S. Constitution that gave women the right to vote, and 59 years after the Voting Rights Act of 1965 that finally removed the barriers against African Americans’ rights to vote, half of the nation’s electorate held their breath, hoping to see a woman finally rise to the highest office in the land, only to see their hope dashed—a crushing loss that took them back eight years when the country rejected the first woman presidential candidate.

When Donald J. Trump ran for the presidency in 2016, he was not the best among the seventeen Republicans that had their eyes on the White House. But the flawed real estate mogul plagued with a slew of legal woes—chief among them his bogus Trump University scam and the use of his foundation to defraud Americans—literally bullied every single one of his Republican rivals to win the nomination to face the Democratic nominee, former first lady and former secretary of state Hillary Rodham Clinton. The majority of voters, including Trump himself, thought he stood no chance of defeating Clinton, the most-qualified aspirant for the White House in decades.

While the jury is still out to determine the exact reason why Clinton lost a race that every poll had her as winning, the U.S. economy—the single most important factor that usually drives the race to the White House—was not a factor, for President Barack Obama had rebuilt the economy from the ashes of the George W. Bush presidency.

Trump winning back the presidency in November 2024 against another qualified woman candidate—even though his decades of unlawful behavior and misogyny had finally earned him a conviction and hefty fines in New York State—shook half of the nation like an earthquake. No other groups felt the devastation more than women, especially Blacks, the most active and committed voting bloc of the Democratic party who led the fund-raising and door-knocking for Harris in the swing states. Quasi unanimously, they pointed the finger at two culprits that have been Trump’s close companions for as long as the public has known him: misogyny and racism.

The day following Trump’s victory, one could read on the website of the largest women’s organization in the United States, the National Organization for Women, NOW, a statement by its president, Christian Nunes: “Donald Trump won by activating a base of voters who chose his racism, misogyny, and xenophobia over unity and democracy.”

In an exclusive interview with Nunes—shared on page 20—The African asked if she did not believe the polls that persistently indicated that the economy was the number 1 issue on the mind of most voters, as is often the case in U.S. presidential elections? “I believe economics was a priority for many voters, but not the reason she lost,” said Nunes. “VP Harris laid out a very clear and detailed economic plan. Clearly, looking at voting, areas where progressives and the democratic vote were typically strong (e.g. the blue wall), the voter turnout was won by Donald Trump.” NOW’s president further explains: “Counties that historically showed democratic turnout and voted for Biden in 2020 and Clinton in 2016 broke history and voted the opposite by voting for Trump. This doesn’t align with economics being the only issue but instead speaks to a country that was not ready to elect a woman of color as president.”

The dozen women from different walks of life The African interviewed for this article discussed several factors to explain Harris’ defeat, but they all mentioned sexism as “a major” or “a minor” factor.

Dr. Jamila K. Taylor, Ph.D., president and CEO of the Washington-based Institute for Women’s Policy Research, a national think tank that says on its website that it “works to build evidence to shape policies that grow women’s power and influence,” could not agree more with the president of NOW: “We have to call it out—the misogyny and racism and sexism,” Dr. Taylor is quoted as saying to the New York Times.

While pointing out Kamala Harris being “forced into a 100-day unwinnable scenario,” Azania R. Heyward-James, the founding principal of The Cornerstone Collective 2020 & Dame Consultants Global, a development, management and professional service consulting firm established in Maryland in 2020, says, “I am one of many who emphatically believe sexism—along with its co-defendants racism and classism, played a role in Kamala Harris’ loss in the 2024 presidential election.”

Other prominent Black elites have a rather nuanced take on the matter, among them Sheila Brown, an author, inventor, coach, “mom-preneur,” and wealth protection lawyer who owns a remote estate planning, elder law and probate law practice in Houston, Texas. “I think sexism was one factor that contributed to the presidential election results,” Brown told The African, adding, “I don’t think it was the only one. I don’t even think it was the main one.” The other factors, in Sheila Brown’s view, were the vice president not distancing herself from Biden’s policies, and her controversial record on criminalizing Black people during her tenure as attorney general of California.

Indeed, many analysts believe that Harris did herself a disservice by sticking to Biden’s policies for most of the campaign. However, the controversy about her record as California’s attorney general with regards to Blacks came up only briefly and didn’t seem to affect her campaign, unlike Bill Clinton’s 1994 Crime Bill that came and haunted Hillary Clinton in 2016.

To explain the sexism factor, Sheila Brown, who graduated with honors from Thurgood Marshall School of Law at Texas Southern University—a historical Black college—and is licensed to practice law before the Texas Bar, the Southern District Court of Texas, and the United States Supreme Court, points to surveys showing that women are considered “less electable” by society in general: “While other studies tend to show some enthusiasm among voters for electing a female president, this seems to be the case only if her ticket is balanced out with a white male as evidenced by her pick for the vice president.” That explains, Brown elaborates, why Harris “intentionally chose a white male to balance out voter concerns about her sex and her racial identity, which also proved controversial throughout the presidential campaign.”

The theory—advocated by many—that a woman candidate has to choose a male running mate to calm voters’ concerns about electing her as president is a testament to the deep roots of sexism in the country. It also crumbles in the face of a tangible reality: in 2016, Hillary Clinton, a white, very qualified female candidate, chose a male running mate and yet lost against a lesser candidate who bullied his way to the nomination and bled all the way to Election Day with proven accusations of sexual misconduct.

Journalist, lawyer and author Jill Filipovic drives home the point quasi-bluntly in remarks published by Politico in the aftermath of Harris’ loss to Trump: “Why hasn’t the United States elected a female president yet? Sometimes the simplest and most obvious explanation is the actual one: The U.S. hasn’t elected a female president yet because the U.S. remains a deeply sexist place, and the man who ran against both potential female presidents was particularly adept at pressing America’s misogyny button.”

One needs not look further than the remarks of Trump’s running mate to see that sexism was front and center in the Trump-JD Vance ticket’s campaign. Adding to Trump’s known sexism—both in words and in action—his running mate was on record as making insulting remarks about women during a 2021 television interview, saying that the country was being run by Democrats, corporate oligarchs and “a bunch of childless cat ladies who are miserable at their own lives and the choices that they’ve made, and so they want to make the rest of the country miserable, too.” Three years later, rather than apologizing for the remarks when they were brought up during the campaign, the now-former senator from Ohio danced around it.

Backed financially by their billionaire supporters who knew their wealth would grow significantly if the ticket wins, the pair and their acolytes, including a popular stand-up comedian who took it to an obscene level, heavily injected sexist sentiments into a receptive population. The majority of men loved it and went along with it despite some of the wives’ alleged bedroom strike.

In a United States where ignorance is more widespread and deeper than the outside world might think, some Americans—primarily men—doubt a woman’s ability to be a good president, some going as far as mentioning women’ perceived “mood swings.” Clearly a slap in the face of history when one thinks of Margaret Thatcher in U.K., Angela Merkel in Germany, and Ellen Johnson Sirleaf in Liberia who have left positive marks on their respective countries.

The gender gap among American voters is quite telling about the nation’s sexist prejudice.

The results of exit polls for the 2024 presidential election conducted by Edison Research via Reuters/Washington Post show a whopping 10 percentage-point gender gap among voters, with 54% of women casting their vote for Harris (against 44% for Trump), and 54% of men preferring Trump (against 44% for Harris).

Despite the unfavorable numbers for Harris, 44% of men voting for a female presidential candidate is a sign of significant progress compared to men’s perception of women’s ability to be a good commander-in-chief just a few decades ago.

Better yet, an exclusive survey of young voters conducted by U.S. News in key swing states between August 25 and September 3—on the heels of the Democratic National Convention—shows an even stronger pro-women trend. An article by Laura Mannweiler posted on the news organization’s website on September 5 shows that more than 80% of voters between the age of 18 and 34 answered positively to the question, “I believe a woman can be an effective president and a strong leader.” The difference of opinion on the basis of education, gender, and political affiliation is quite telling. This is an indication that sexism might not prosper as new generations replace the current ones.

The enormous progress made by women in all spheres of life bode well for a big change. But then, Nancy Pelosi became the first woman elected as U.S. House Speaker only 21 years ago, being the first woman to lead a major political party in either chamber of the U.S. Congress. The watershed moment came after 51 men have assumed that position, and 215 years after the Congress of the United States, established by the new Constitution, met for the first time at New York City’s Federal Hall on March 4, 1789. How much longer, one might wonder, will it take the United States—which, according to several materials available on the Internet, falls significantly in global ranking for gender equality—to be ready to elect a woman president?

Opinions differed among the dozen women interviewed by The African for this article.

Sheila Brown, the afore-mentioned attorney and a public speaker who regularly speaks about Women of the Garvey movement, says, “I think it’s hard to define ‘America’ in the context of voting and elections, so I won’t attempt to do that. But I do think there are many people in the United States, both the male and female, who are uncomfortable with having a woman lead the country from the White House regardless of who else serves on her cabinet.”

“I think and emphatically believe the people of America are ready for a woman to fulfill the role of the leading Executive Branch of the United States of America,” says Azania R. Heyward-James, the aforementioned founding principal of The Cornerstone Collective 2020 & Dame Consultants Global, a Maryland-based development, management and professional service consulting firm. “Honestly, the question is not about capability, as many women, including African American and Black women and women of other ethnicities, are more than capable of effectively and successfully leading the highest leadership posts in all systems of governance,” she adds. Heyward-James, who holds an undergraduate degree from Spelman College—a historical Black college—a graduate degree from the University of Massachusetts at Amherst and a professional certification in Integrative Nutrition and Health Counseling from the Institute of Integrative Nutrition and SUNY, notes that “women represent nearly one third of C-Suite executives in U.S. companies while representing 52% of the  population, yet African American and Black women currently represent only 2% of this elite C-Suite population.”

Christian Nunes, president of the National Organization for Women (in the interview shared in full on page 20), says: “I believe America knows the power and strength that women possess, but sexism and racism are so deeply entrenched in our country’s framework that we would have to be intentional about resolving those original sins before a woman can be elected for president.”