The first woman US president? It matters

Policy is more important perhaps -- but that's not what will make history

Girl Power by Michael McComb

As Democrats gather in Chicago, the most remarkable of the storylines is going strangely unremarked: America in 2024 might finally elect a woman president. The personal differences between Kamala Harris and Donald Trump — gender being just one of them — is so stark that they will overwhelm the issues. So she needs to use this week’s Democratic National Convention in Chicago to win hearts far more than minds.

One could argue, of course, that politics should be identity-blind, and that only policy and competence should matter to the voters. Generally, that’s actually how I tend to prefer things, myself. But that kind of thinking gets hard to sustain considering the specific fact that no woman has ever been elected to the highest US office. And, realistically, it would also require having never met the voters.

Human beings are not so gender blind. No women anywhere could even vote before about a century ago—meaning there were no true democracies. The first country to extend the vote to women was New Zealand in 1893 (and even there they were barred from running for office until 1919). In the US, women were only awarded the vote in 1920, sadly lagging after key countries in Europe.

Moreover, many countries are way ahead of America in electing women leaders as well. The US lags behind Britain (leading the pack with three, all from the Conservative party), Germany (Angela Merkel served as chancellor for 16 years, until 2021), India (Indira Gandhi actually governed twice), Italy, Israel, Argentina, Brazil and now Mexico.