Why is the US an outlier when it comes to electing a woman head of government?

Indira Gandhi was the prime minister of India for much of my childhood in the 1970s’ and ’80s, so when I came to the United States to finish high school in 1989, I was stunned to discover that America had never elected a woman president. It didn’t make sense given how “developed” the US is, and how relatively unfettered American women seemed – they went where they wanted to go, dressed how they liked, played all kinds of sports, embarked on every possible career, and seemed to have the same opportunities as men.

Parents didn’t despair when a girl baby was born, they didn’t spend more on their sons just because they were sons, there was no dowry system, no “bride burning,” nor were there female feticides.

Yet nearly 60 years ago, in 1966, Indians took a leap and voted Indira Gandhi into office. As we know, she won several elections and served as prime minister from 1966 to 1977, and then from 1980 until her assassination in 1984.

And India is far from the only “developing” country to have elected a woman head of government. In 1960, Sirimavo Bandaranaike of Sri Lanka became the first woman to be elected prime minister of any country, Benazir Bhutto was elected prime minister of Pakistan in 1988, Sheikh Hasina was elected prime minister of Bangladesh in 1996.

Outside South Asia, too, many developing nations have elected women heads of government, including Dominica, which elected Eugenia Charles in 1980; Panama, which elected Mireya Mosoco in 1999; and Brazil, which elected Dilma Rousseff in 2011. The US lags behind all of them, not to mention Iceland, Israel, the United Kingdom, Germany, Italy, and Mexico.

To be sure, the South Asian countries I’ve mentioned have parliamentary systems of government, so the electorate isn’t directly voting for the head of government. But voters know who is leading each of the major parties – and therefore who will lead the country if a particular party wins. And yes, all the South Asian women leaders mentioned here had either fathers or husbands who were prime ministers before them.

But voters picked the daughters and wives to lead their countries, and most of them quickly emerged from under the influence of male politicians and showed the world they were quite capable of making their own decisions

Not only have American women not had similar success, but few – whether wives or daughters or otherwise – have even attempted to run for the presidency. Women in America are subject to seemingly impossible expectations, and these apply particularly to women in politics – women whose every move is scrutinised.

You must be smart but not too smart; well-spoken but neither glib nor stiff; project power but not seem like a ball-buster; look good but not too good; know your mind but not be a bitch. It’s a double standard that doesn’t apply to men.

By contrast, it has always seemed to me that women in India are subject to only one standard: they are, without a doubt, second-class citizens. So when an Indian woman, through some combination of abilities, birth, and determination does lay claim to the highest position in the land, she no longer also has to check all the boxes in the “woman” category. It is as though as soon as she shows that she is unwilling to be subordinated, that limiting category no longer applies.

After Hillary Clinton lost in 2016, I wondered when a major political party would put up a woman candidate again. In the wake of her defeat, I watched in dismay as Kamala Harris dropped out early, Amy Klobuchar didn’t pick up steam, and Elizabeth Warren failed to win a single state during the 2020 Democratic primary cycle.

That six women were even running (the list also included Kirsten Gillibrand, Tulsi Gabbard, and Marianne Williamson) seemed like progress, but the fact that they all fizzled out so dismally only confirmed that no matter how capable, American women faced a daunting task.

As the 2024 primaries rolled into view and Nikki Haley announced her candidacy for the Republican nomination, an unexpected thought insinuated itself in my mind. I started to wonder whether the first woman president of the US might be a woman of colour, and a Republican at that.

I also wasn’t surprised that the only Republican woman running was the daughter of Indian immigrants. It meant that Indira Gandhi’s premiership would have been familiar to her parents. The “imagination barrier” works two ways – voters can’t imagine a woman as president and, by extension, women can’t imagine a world in which they are president either. But through her parents, I imagined Haley channeling a tradition and a place where a woman had led the country.

There was another reason why I thought that the first woman president of America might be a woman of colour. Because American womanhood has historically been defined as white, white women are perhaps more likely than women of colour to be perceived first and foremost as gendered beings – and therefore judged according to pernicious gender stereotypes and expectations.

On the other hand, for much of American history, women of colour haven’t really been seen as women. In fact, they haven’t been seen much at all. Counter-intuitively, that is what could make it easier for a woman of colour to shed some of that gendered baggage and step into the mantle of universal personhood, which allows her to deflect some of the usual stereotypes.

This could explain why Donald Trump’s insults haven’t stuck to Kamala Harris, and why, when she was asked during her CNN interview about not explicitly discussing race or gender in her convention speech, she replied, “I am running because I believe that I am the best person to do this job at this moment for all Americans, regardless of race and gender.”

Although Harris wasn’t nominated as the presidential candidate during the primaries, now that she is the Democratic nominee, it is striking that even Republican leaders have urged Trump and others to refrain from racist and sexist attacks. Because those attacks haven’t worked, they want to go after her on policy, and as a result, have been forced to treat a woman candidate like a man – which is to say, to challenge her on issues of substance.

Harris’s demeanor and choices also play a part in moving her out of a strictly gendered space. She recognises that voters are fed up with the “same old tired playbook”. She gives her opponents as little as possible to work with by not going on about glass ceilings, and by wearing a consistent uniform of a suit – like Angela Merkel – so that there’s not much to discuss when it comes to her attire. She is all about the job – both because that is the image she projects and because large swathes of the public and press are willing to see her that way.

Of course, all presidential elections are immensely complicated, and even after being relentlessly characterised as an “abrasive woman”, Hillary Clinton won the popular vote in 2016. Regardless of the outcome of this year’s race, we must not look away from the troubling fact that the US has been an outlier when it comes to electing a woman head of government – and what this says about the expectations the world’s oldest democracy still places on women, and the many battles left to fight for women’s rights and equality, both in the US, India, and across the globe.

Radha Vatsal writes about women, history, culture and politics. She is a Fellow at the CUNY Writers' Institute. Her work has appeared in The New York Times, The Atlantic, and the Los Angeles Review of Books. Her new novel, No.10 Doyers Street will be published in March 2025. Her website can be accessed here.