Women’s Unfinished Path to the U.S. Presidency

When I started researching women and the United States presidency in 1999, with the nine-month exploratory bid of Elizabeth Dole, occasionally someone would interrupt me and ask: “Can a woman even be president in the United States?” meaning “Is it Constitutionally possible?” I really couldn’t blame someone for asking that question, given the evidence. We had never had a woman get close, so it seemed like maybe somehow they were not “allowed.” It’s hard to visualize something that has never happened, except in the movies and on TV. When she ran for president in 1988, Rep. Pat Schroeder grew tired of people commenting, “You don’t look like the president.” Hillary Clinton’s bids in 2008 and 2016 were the first times in United States history that a woman had a viable shot at winning, and for anyone still wondering if women were eligible for the presidency, she cleared up that question.

As I complete my latest book, which examines the presidential bids of six women in 2020 and focuses on the gender implications of their races, I’m struck by the progress women have made toward the presidency. I haven’t been asked whether women are eligible to become president for more than a decade. In 2020 we saw Tulsi Gabbard, Kirsten Gillibrand, Amy Klobuchar, Kamala Harris, Elizabeth Warren, and Marianne Williamson run for president — four are sitting U.S. senators, two are women of color. In fact, more than 100 women have run for president, as far back as 1872, and each one defied stereotypes and widened the possibilities of what a presidential candidate looks like. Sen. Margaret Chase Smith, Rep. Shirley Chisholm, Sen. Patsy Mink, Sen. Carol Moseley-Braun, and CEO Carly Fiorina were all contenders.

Although women are still underrepresented in politics at every level, research shows that when women run, women win at the same rate as men. Since 2018 we have seen an increased number of women running for political office at all levels—and winning, too. In 2016 we elected our first woman in Pennsylvania’s 7th District, Democrat Susan Wild, and this year she was challenged by Republican Lisa Scheller, who, like many Republican women, performed well. In 2020 Democrat Cori Bush became the first Black woman elected to Congress from Missouri, and New Mexico became the first state to elect all women of color to its House delegation. A record 17 Republican women won Congressional seats, more than in any other election cycle. It shows what parties can do to elevate women when they make the effort, because similar to 2018, when Democratic women were lifted up with PACs and other party support, the Republican party increased its support of women running. University of Virginia political science professor Jennifer Lawless told NPR, “The Republicans have demonstrated that when they make some effort to recruit female candidates, they see an increase in women’s representation.” Republican groups like E-PAC are growing, but they have a lot of work to do to get to the level of EMILY’s List, which recruits and promotes Democratic women who support abortion rights.

Because of stubbornly persistent biases about women’s capability, a portion of the electorate still has a hard time imagining a woman as president. The website Five Thirty-Eight interviewed 97 women politicians asking them a series of questions about how media covers them. Their answers reveal many of the obstacles against female leadership — they reported being asked if they have children, and if so, are they cared for when the candidate is on the campaign trail, who styles their hair, where they get their dresses, and whether or not they plan to get married, if they are single.

While campaigning for president, Kamala Harris repeatedly said that she had “faith in the American people to know that we will never be burdened by the assumptions of who can do what based on who historically has done it.” In her acceptance of the vice presidential nomination, Harris underscored that the work of gender equality in the United States is far from over. She said, “But while I may be the first woman in this office, I won’t be the last. Because every little girl watching tonight sees that this is a country of possibilities.”

I’m convinced that seeing a woman vice president, a position as close to the presidency as there is, will help remove the psychological barriers, such as uneven expectations, against women and leadership. I think that for many Americans, seeing Harris do her job as vice president is going to be revelatory and in fact lead to a trend toward more women elected at every level. When we all see Kamala Harris as a major contributor in the Oval Office, traveling the country and the world as a diplomat, helping to shape policy, it will have a huge impact on two major barriers — not enough women running and bias against women as leaders — until it becomes unthinkable nothave women in equal and even greater numbers than men at every level of political leadership.

It has been glacial progress for women and political parity in the United States, but progress nonetheless, because when women run, women win. And one day, a woman will be president of the United States.