US elections 2024: Stoking the gender divide must stop

Leila Hawkins

Stop me if you think you've heard this one before: the outcome of this US election could reshape the world's political order as we know it. The future of democracy is at stake. The US could be on the brink of civil war/a descent into fascism/transforming into the Republic of Gilead. The rest of the world waits in terror to find out who will be responsible for handling nuclear codes and climate agreements for the next four years. 

We could just as easily be in 2016 or 2020, as after eight years the American people don't seem to have had enough of Donald Trump's bluster nor his ability for getting away with a seemingly endless amount of legal troubles. But a deeply troubling fact about this election is the widening gender gap in voter intentions, which, depending on the poll you believe, places it in the range of 9 to 18 points between the two candidates. 

Kamala Harris has seemingly downplayed the “first woman president” angle, perhaps a smart move given some of the misogynistic rhetoric flying around, but this hasn't stopped opponents from DEI-baiting, or supporters arguing that this is a single-issue race about women's bodily autonomy. This week, in the final stages of campaigning, an ad narrated by Julia Roberts has added fuel to the fire, highlighting tensions between married couples’ differing voting choices. The row over abortion rights since the overturning of Roe v Wade in 2022, plus the many allegations of sexual assault against Trump (not to mention that a jury has actually found him guilty of sexual abuse) meant that this election was always going to be a battle of the sexes — and one that is unlikely to go away easily whoever wins. 

The results of a Gallup poll published in September this year showed changes in young women's and men's support for a number of causes between 2001 and the current year. Significantly, it found that the share of women aged 18-29 who hold liberal views on the environment, abortion and gun laws has jumped by almost 20% over the last two decades. It’s worth noting that the poll also found that young men have moved closer to liberal positions on most issues too, but not as significantly as women.

This adds hard data to the notion that women are skewing more liberal than men, but importantly it should be a call for understanding why this gender divide exists and why it is growing. 

If the Democrats win they will need to make a huge effort to reach out to men, many of whom are young, and feel alienated and disenfranchised in this new post #MeToo world.  This means implementing policies that promote economic equity, healthcare access and fair representation without feeding the gender divide, while paying greater attention to the issues where men and women are diverging, and finding ways to bridge the gap by resolving them. After all, isn’t one of the duties of government to solve and reduce conflicts in society? 

If Trump is successful, who knows? He may have publicly distanced himself from Project 2025 (which proposes further limiting access to abortion and ending DEI initiatives), but many people he aligns himself with and who may be part of his future administration have either helped create the document or have announced they would take parts of it forward, such as Elon Musk’s plans to cut and massively restructure federal agencies, which Musk himself has said will lead to economic hardship. Having appointed three Supreme Court judges in his term as president which made the overturning of Roe v Wade possible, and suggesting questionable appointments like Robert F. Kennedy Jr will be able to "go wild" on healthcare, food and medicines does not bode well — for anyone, let alone women's rights. But after more than eight years of warnings (and one full presidency term), does America need to experience what one scholar has called “a project of national suicide” before it wakes up and rebuilds itself? 

The capitulation of both parties along gender lines may secure just enough votes in this neck-and-neck race to tip them to victory, but this is the wrong approach. It guarantees the US will be back here in four years’ time, facing the same existential questions it has been asking for almost a decade.