Why can the US not elect a female president, as Kamala Harris loses out to Donald Trump?

A friend of mine summed up the situation perfectly when she woke up on Wednesday morning to the news that Donald Trump was set to become the 47th president of the US.

“Oh America!” she wrote on social media. “How bad does a man have to be to lose? And how good does a woman need to be to win?”

It is an excellent question. The US has not yet had a female leader. And now, after choosing Mr Trump, a convicted felon, over the apparently legally-compliant Kamala Harris, it will not have one for at least another four years, and probably well beyond that, unless any party is willing to sacrifice yet another female candidate to act as cannon fodder in 2028.

In 2016, former Secretary of State Hillary Clinton became the first woman to be a major party's presidential nomination, while Ms Harris was named the first female vice-president, when she took office in 2020. Neither have made it to the White House.

While there are around 100 countries worldwide which have not yet been led by a woman, few of them are Western democracies.

Scotland has had a female leader in the form of Nicola Sturgeon, who held the top job for nine years. Indeed, at one point, all three leaders of the main parties in Scotland were women. The UK government has had three - Margaret Thatcher, Theresa May and Liz Truss, all Tories.

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Notably, Australia, not known for its progressive stance on women’s lib, also has had a female leader, as has Finland, which, to be fair, spent Sanna Marin’s four-year term berating her for having a social life. Mexico elected Claudia Sheinbaum as president in June. Meanwhile, Sri Lanka was the first country in modern times to elect a female prime minister, in 1960, when Sirimavo Bandaranaike took the top role and ended up serving three separate terms over the next 40 years.

Yet, the US - supposedly one of the world’s most powerful democracies - seems unable to stomach the concept of having someone in charge who has a vagina. Bizarrely, millions of women on that side of the Atlantic still support Mr Trump. While pre-election polls showed the majority of women favoured Ms Harris over Mr Trump 58 per cent to 40 per cent, that is still 40 per cent who would prefer to have their lives governed by an openly sexist, misogynistic man than his female opponent.

Well aware of that, Ms Harris made her campaign about issues and energy, not her gender. She has apparently very carefully made little reference to the potential historic significance if she had won, despite focusing on woman-centric issues such as abortion during her campaign.

She had some success. She energised grassroots supporters and was seen as inherently likeable: a stark contrast to Mr Trump, who was last year found liable for a sex attack on writer E Jean Carroll, is a convicted felon over hush money payments to porn star Stormy Daniels and has been accused of racism on various fronts.

Yet, this was not enough. The US electorate opted for Mr Trump’s staunchly right-wing stance on immigration and business, claiming it was that that swayed them, rather than they simply could not bring themselves to elect Ms Harris.

There have been claims that Ms Harris was too likeable, that she did not ooze the drive and authority needed to be the president of the United States.

Yet, Ms Clinton was said to have lost her election predominantly because she was not likeable. You can’t have it both ways.

The message is clear: a woman simply cannot win. Yet.

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