The results of Election 2024 were not unexpected. In fact, they were predictable given both the research on Americans’ willingness to vote for a woman for president and our constitutional design. As I’ve written, the American presidency is a consolidated executive that combines the head of state, head of government, and commander-in-chief roles in a single person. The purpose of the Founders’ structural choice was, in part, to ensure the executive would be strong and nimble enough to protect the young nation. But this “agentic” or masculine model of the executive differs from other western democracies — many of which have already had female leaders —and it tends to reinforce gender stereotypes about leadership ability.

During the election, former President Donald Trump capitalized on this agentic executive model and on gender stereotypes or “schemas” that voters hold about candidates’ “fit” in terms of the presidency. He said Vice President Kamala Harris didn’t look presidential. Back in 2016, he said the same thing about Secretary Hillary Clinton while questioning her ability to command the military. In 2024, the intersection of the Vice President’s race and gender amplified the negative impact of such comments on voter preferences.

As historians know, progress isn’t linear. It’s always two steps forward, one step back. Still, women did make some progress in this election, with candidates Lisa Blunt Rochester in Delaware and Angela Alsobrooks in Maryland winning open Senate seats. This will be the first time that two Black women will serve together in the U.S. Senate.

As I remind my students, the fight for women’s full political participation has never been easy. Susan B. Anthony was arrested and put on trial for illegal voting, and Alice Paul was denounced as unpatriotic and jailed for picketing the White House. The American woman suffrage movement has also not been without classism and racism. It was dominated by elite, white women. Black suffragists like Mary Ann Shadd Cary and Mary Church Terrell were marginalized in dominantly white suffrage organizations like the National Woman Suffrage Association and the National Woman’s Party. And most women of color remained disenfranchised by poll taxes, literacy tests, and exclusionary citizenship laws long after the federal woman suffrage amendment was ratified in 1920.

In 1916, a constitutional amendment ensuring that no state could deny a citizen the vote solely because of her sex was still a distant hope. Yet by the election of 1920, the Nineteenth Amendment had been ratified. It took seventy-two years to achieve a constitutional amendment that paved the way for women’s full citizenship. Suffragists like Anthony didn’t live to see that achievement. The lesson is that American women should stay the course. It may take decades for this country to see a woman in the Oval Office. But, as I tell my students, it’s a relay. Each generation carries the baton for a leg of the race and, eventually, one of those generations will get us to the finish line.