For the second time in eight years, a girl has received the Democratic nomination for US president, solely to return up quick in a marketing campaign the place gender was a central situation.

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Like Hillary Clinton in 2016, Kamala Harris had a shot at changing into the primary girl to occupy the Oval Office however stumbled on the remaining hurdle.

While the charisma of their opponent – Donald Trump, in each instances – clearly performed a task in these historic defeats, many observers additionally noticed misogyny as an element.

In their dueling campaigns, Harris and Trump laid out starkly completely different visions for girls’s standing and rights.

Trump, who has confronted a number of accusations of sexual assault he denies, sought to broadcast a hypermasculine picture, showing alongside combined martial artists and providing reward for autocratic world leaders.

He and his marketing campaign surrogates additionally made a number of feedback that had been criticized as insulting or contemptuous of girls.

He known as Harris “crazy” and “mentally disabled”, and claimed she can be “like a play toy” for different world leaders if elected.

His operating mate, Ohio Senator J.D. Vance, doubled down on a quip he made in 2021 about “childless cat ladies” operating the nation, saying “I’ve got nothing against cats.”

Trump additionally offered himself as a “protector” of girls, saying he would defend them whether or not they “like it or not.”

Defender of girls’s rights

Harris against this relied closely on feminine celebrities equivalent to Beyonce, Jennifer Lopez, Lady Gaga and Oprah Winfrey, betting that they’d assist her attain even conservative girls voters.

Harris didn’t marketing campaign overtly on the truth that she would have been the primary feminine president of the United States.

But she made the defence of girls’s rights, and abortion specifically, one of many cornerstones of her marketing campaign.

But this seems to not have received over sufficient reasonably conservative girls.

At a marketing campaign rally final month, former first woman Michelle Obama denounced the obvious double commonplace by which the 2 White House candidates had been judged.

“We expect her to be intelligent and articulate, to have a clear set of policies, to never show too much anger, to prove time and time again that she belongs,” she mentioned of Harris.

“But for Trump, we expect nothing at all. No understanding of policy, no ability to put together a coherent argument, no honesty, no decency, no morals.”

Will America ever have a feminine president?

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By Garrin Lambley © Agence France-Presse