When Anita Lawrence watched Hillary Clinton lose the 2016 election, she thought to herself, “well, there goes my opportunity to see a woman in the presidency.”
Maybe the U.S. was unable or unwilling to view a woman as capable of serving as president, she thought.
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“Women have always had to work harder, longer and smarter than their cohorts for less pay. And I think it’s just part of our culture in this country that men, and even women, cannot see a woman as a leader of this nation,” Lawrence said.
Then 65, Lawrence wasn’t sure if a major political party would nominate a woman again in her lifetime.
But that opportunity came sooner than expected.
Women over 70 have lived through innumerable revolutionary changes in gender equality in their lifetimes, including the rise and fall of the constitutional right to an abortion, the ability to have their own credit cards, the implementation of Title IX, the election of lawmakers who look like them. With Vice President Kamala Harris now topping the Democratic ticket, they have a chance to see if this history-making run has a different ending from 2016 – and they may even play a role in that outcome.
Anita Lawrence, 73, at a rally for Vice President Kamala Harris in Banning, California, on Oct. 27, 2024. Photo courtesy Anita Lawrence
Ahead of the election, PBS News spoke to 13 women, ranging in age from 71 to 97, about their lives, the race and seeing another woman atop a major party ticket.
“Once we get a woman president, I don’t think it’ll be as different,” Hilary Lane, 73, said. “It’ll be more normalized.”
Sharon Rasey, 85, said the 2017 Women’s March was one of the highlights of her life. “I came away from D.C. and came home feeling that we were going to have another opportunity to elect a woman.”
“I don’t know if we’ll ever have a woman president. I sure hope we have one. I hope we have one this time,” said Debbie Flanagan, who is 89.
Echoing the razor-thin national poll margins bedeviling supporters on both sides of the aisle, the women who spoke to PBS News largely see a tight race.
Older women are an incredibly engaged segment of the electorate, said Nancy LeaMond, executive vice president and chief advocacy and engagement officer at AARP.
“A staggering 96 percent of women over the age of 50 are telling us they are highly motivated to vote in the upcoming election,” she said.
This year, there’s a wide gap among older women when it comes to support for the candidates. An AARP poll conducted over the summer found that 54 percent of women over 50 supported Harris, compared to 42 percent who supported Trump. (Overall, women of all ages favor Harris over Trump 58 to 40, according to the latest PBS News/ NPR/ Marist poll.)
Some who shared their stories are still bitter over Clinton’s loss. One is committed to voting for Trump for the third time. Many are enthusiastic about Harris and her qualifications.
Patricia Laarman is “thrilled” that Harris is running, and believes she’s qualified for the position based on her history as attorney general of California and as vice president.
“You know, I am 90 years old and I have voted in 16 presidential elections, and [2016] was the height of it. I mean, it was just so impressive,” Laarman said. She said it was “very important” to her to see a woman elected president.
Patricia Laarman campaigns for Democratic candidate Hillary Clinton in 2016 with her niece. Photo courtesy Patricia Laarman
Similarly, Laurie Willard was excited that Democrats, the party she said she’s almost always voted for, nominated Clinton.
“One of the reasons I was disappointed [after Clinton lost] was because I am 78 and I was thinking I’d really like to have a woman president in my lifetime,” said Willard, who lives in Anoka, Minnesota. “I am very excited about Kamala,” she added.
Willard was one of many women who spoke about their personal histories facing sexism and misogyny, and expressed how seeing Clinton run for president in 2016 exemplified how far women’s ambitions have come.
When Willard was 17, she got pregnant. “That was the very first time I’d ever even thought about” an abortion, she said. Her father, a physician, told her he wouldn’t give her one. “I had no choice.”
Her daughter, whom she raised largely as a single mother, is what she’s most proud of in her life. But it was not an easy path.
When Willard later separated from her husband, she was saddled with debt from a car purchase she’d had no input on, and had no credit as a single woman. She also said that throughout her career she was paid less than men doing the same job.
“I do really vote on how someone stands on a whole range of women’s issues,” Willard said.
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Some women said that while they were happy that Clinton and Harris are women, the possibility of seeing a woman elected president was more of a bonus than their top priority.
That includes 97-year-old Rita Walsh, a Democrat from Centerville, Ohio, who volunteered in one of Clinton’s field offices in 2016. Walsh now supports Harris in part because of the positive experience her daughter had working as a public defender when the vice president was a prosecutor in California.
She was “heartbroken” when Clinton lost, but said she’s not particularly worried about the country never electing a female president. It will happen, she said – eventually.
Walsh is glad to see that the focus of the 2024 election has not been on the gender of the candidates.
“I haven’t heard anything about [Harris] being a female candidate and I’m so happy because it’s just she’s a candidate, that’s all, period, end of sentence,” Walsh said.
Laurie Willard campaigns for Vice President Kamala Harris in Anoka, Minnesota, on Oct. 29, 2024. Photo courtesy Laurie Willard
A 2023 Pew report found that a majority of adults, including a majority of men and women, did not think it was important for the U.S. to elect a woman president in their lifetime.
People generally vote along party or ideological lines, said Kelly Dittmar, director of research at the Center for American Women and Politics at Rutgers University, and are unlikely to support a candidate, especially from a different party, based on a specific demographic characteristic, such as race or gender.
For instance, “Putting Sarah Palin on the ticket [as Republican candidate Sen. John McCain’s vice president in 2008] was not going to help with Democratic women, which the Republicans got pretty wrong,” she said.
But there are other likely political benefits of gender affinity, including upticks in enthusiasm, donations and volunteering, Dittmar said.
Some election observers believe not emphasizing her gender is an intentional choice by Harris’ campaign, especially as a stark contrast with Clinton’s, which often focused on the history-making aspect.
That belief is likely at least somewhat accurate, Dittmar said. She pointed to the fact that Clinton is both of an older generation than Harris, as well as to the fact that much of Clinton’s political life has focused on the rights of women.
But she also said some of the comparisons might be overblown. Many of the references to Clinton’s historic campaign were made by surrogates, such as her vice presidential pick, Virginia Sen. Tim Kaine, or in her merchandise.
Clinton’s gender “wasn’t her central message,” she said. “That is consistent with almost all women who run for office. We know that because at the end of the day people vote on party and policy, they’re not going to be sold on ‘Vote for me because I can make history.’”
Some of Harris’ surrogates are making similar claims, she noted. Still, Clinton’s 2016 campaign night party was held at the Javits Center in New York, which has a literal glass ceiling.
Rita Walsh, 97, on a family vacation to South Carolina. Walsh was “heartbroken” when Hillary Clinton lost, but said she’s not particularly worried about the U.S. never electing a female president. It will happen, she said – eventually. Photo courtesy Rita Walsh
For Harris, “identity clearly matters to her. But, you know, I think this general kind of like making history, breaking glass ceilings is maybe less central to her own perception of who she is,” Dittmar said. “I think there’s more expectation, and there’s a move to try to kind of normalize the leadership instead of pointing it out as something that’s different or unique.”
Most of the women heavily emphasized what the data suggest: that they always intend to vote for the candidate they think is most qualified, or whose values and policies align most closely with their own.
The AARP poll found that top issues for women over 50 include the economy, immigration and threats to American democracy.
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Social Security is, and has consistently been, a major issue for voters over 50, including women, LeaMond said. But female voters over 50 also comprise a vast and diverse group, said Margie Omero, a Democratic pollster who worked with AARP. That part of the electorate encompasses Gen Xers, baby boomers and the Silent Generation.
Some of the women PBS News talked to raised the Supreme Court’s decision to overturn the constitutional right to an abortion as a factor motivating them this year.
“It really feels like we’re going backwards. All of us that are our age grew up through this entire evolution of women’s rights,” said Brenda Bonhomme, 71, who has worked as a poll worker in Philadelphia in the past three general elections. “Certainly when I was a child, my mother couldn’t get a credit card without my father’s signature and never learned to drive, which was something that frustrated her,” she said.
Many women told PBS News that though the gender of the candidate they’re supporting is less important to them than policy, they also often said they would be more likely to vote for a hypothetical female candidate over a male candidate, assuming no major policy or party differences between them.
“I would go by the issues, but I do lean a little bit towards women. Because I feel that they just have a different sense of empathy. And that’s not always been the case. But that’s just a feeling I have,” said Lane, a retired Democrat who lives in Lafayette, Colorado.
Elaine Francis, a 73-year-old Democratic voter from Plantation, Florida, agreed. “If their policies were exactly the same [or] along the same line, I would go ahead and vote for the woman. Because as a woman myself, I think we are more empathetic. Most of us handle a lot more –- I mean, it sounds sexist – than the men do.”
“I still think, having raised one daughter and one son, having worked with both men and women in similar jobs, women approach things differently,” said Janice Comer, 72. “I just feel a kinship with women. I trust women more.”
Erin Vilardi, CEO of Vote Run Lead, an organization that identifies and trains women for public office, pushed back against the idea that it would be wrong to vote for a female candidate because of her gender.
“That in and of itself is sexism, is that bias really built into our own thinking,” Vilardi said. “We are a democracy. And it is the fair and just thing to see yourself represented in government no matter who you are without having to make this ridiculous case that women are better at government.”
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Writ large, Dittmar thinks that Democrats exhibit more “general enthusiasm and urgency around women’s political representation,” both because there are more women who are Democrats and because the party has made greater gains in representation across gender, race and other demographics.
Enthusiasm for female candidates is less pronounced among Republicans, according to Dittmar’s research talking to voters.
“They’re much more prone to say, both in surveys and in our interviews, ‘We don’t care if it’s a woman or a man. We care most if it’s the best qualified candidate,’” she said, adding that they often perceive their party to be unaffected by “identity politics.”
That’s how Marie Timms, a 72-year-old registered independent from Las Vegas, feels.
Though she didn’t support Trump in the 2016 primary election, she did vote for him over Clinton and then supported him again in 2020. She will cast her ballot for the former president this year, too, she said.
Eight years ago, Timms researched Clinton’s civil rights record and wasn’t impressed. As a Black woman, she said she also felt patronized by Clinton, such as when the former secretary of state said she always carries hot sauce in her bag. Though Clinton’s love of the spicy condiment dates back decades, the comment struck some as a reference to Beyonce’s song, “Formation.”
“I thought it was just insulting to Black people and it was insulting to me. And she didn’t have any substance other than [degrading] Donald Trump many times,” Timms said.
Timms doesn’t feel that Harris is a qualified candidate, but she respects other women politicians from history, including Shirley Chisholm, Condoleezza Rice and Barbara Jordan.
All things being equal, Timms said it would be “delightful” to see a woman elected president. She just hasn’t yet found a candidate she’s willing to support.
Janice Comer had always voted alongside her husband for Republican candidates. Today, she is excited about Harris’ campaign. Photo courtesy Janice Comer
Until her husband died four years ago, Janice Comer had voted alongside him, always for Republicans. Though she often leaned left, she said she didn’t like Clinton, and cast her ballot for Trump in 2016. When her candidate won, she remembers feeling disappointed.
But in the past few years, she’s become more politically engaged, spending more time researching candidates and issues and voting in Republican primaries solely to disrupt candidacies that worry her or support candidates she finds more palatable.
Even when she was voting Republican in general elections, she remembers being excited about Geraldine Ferraro, whom Walter Mondale selected as his vice presidential pick in his failed 1984 run against President Ronald Reagan.
“About time,” she remembers thinking. “We’re finally going to start having women be elected to the big offices.”
Today, Comer is excited about Harris’ campaign. She finds the vice president personable and intelligent.
“I’m excited that she’s a woman. Since I was a child, I have thought that women should run the country. I think we’d be much better at it,” she said.
Many nations have had female heads of states, and the names of some of those notable firsts came up during several interviews, including the U.K.’s Margaret Thatcher; Israel’s Golda Meir; India’s Indira Gandhi; New Zealand’s Jacinda Ardern; and Mexico’s recently elected president, Claudia Sheinbaum.
Brenda Bonhomme, 71, has worked as a poll worker in the past three general elections. “Certainly when I was a child, my mother couldn’t get a credit card without my father’s signature and never learned to drive, which was something that frustrated her,” she said. Photo courtesy Brenda Bonhomme
“Other countries have managed to cross that threshold and move on,” Bonhomme said.
“Misogyny is just kind of a political immaturity. I just see it as being that it shouldn’t be an issue. And it is. But it shouldn’t be,” she added.
During this election cycle, those who have felt up to it have been campaigning, including posting to social media, donating, writing postcards and wearing political shirts.
Dittmar expects a fairly wide gender schism, though she also cautions that differing methodologies among pollsters and questionable math might inflate that spread in the run-up to Election Day. LeaMond said that since Omero and her Republican pollster counterpart Kristen Soltis Anderson began conducting polling this summer, they believe older women will be “the wildcard constituency.”
Vilardi has a more straightforward perspective. She thinks older women “know the assignment” and have mobilized for Harris.
“I am of the mind that this election breaks for Harris,” she said, “and it is older women who put her over the top.”
— Vivian Hoang contributed reporting.
