In running for the U.S. presidency, Vice President Kamala Harris has largely leaned away from talking about the ways in which she could make history if she becomes Commander-in-Chief. America, of course, has never had a female president, nor one who is South-Asian. But the only time the word “first” appeared in Harris’ speech accepting her party’s nomination for the Oval Office was a reference to a homeowner bill of rights she passed while serving as California’s attorney general.
When asked in interviews about what her gender means to her within the context of the race, Harris has responded by saying that she is running for president because she believes she is the best person for the job, regardless of race or gender.
Incidentally, the closest Harris has come to openly dwelling on the fact that she stands to break a few glass ceilings—as a woman, as a Black-and-South Asian person—came during a brief appearance during this weekend’s Saturday Night Live. Actor Maya Rudolph, dressed as Harris, spoke from the “green room” of a campaign stop. “This is it: the last campaign stop in Pennsylvania,” Rudolph says, in character. “Gosh, I just wish I could talk to someone who’s been in my shoes, you know? A Black South-Asian woman running for president — preferably from the Bay Area?”
The camera angle widened and the actual VP appeared on the other side of the dressing room’s vanity. Her reply? “You and me both, sister.”
Harris has already made history as the nation’s first female vice president and first Black and South Asian person to hold the role. Before that, she was the first Black person and first woman to serve as California’s attorney general and also the nation’s first Indian-American woman to become a U.S. senator.
But these “firsts” pale in comparison to the impact Harris will have, should she succeed in the quest to remove the “vice” from her title.
“There are millions of women and girls watching this election, and when a girl sees a woman lead, wherever she is in the world, she knows that she can lead as well,” says Mona Sinha, the global director of gender equity nonprofit Equality Now and a member of the 2023 Forbes 50 Over 50 list. Noting that recent travels to France and India have reminded her of just how consequential the American presidency can be, Sinh, who like the VP is South Asian, adds “when a boy sees a woman lead, he learns how to respect it, and that’s how change happens.”
Sinha is one of more than two dozen female founders and leaders to whom Forbes reached out to discuss the potential meaning of this historic moment. Some demurred, saying they’d wait until after the election, while others were happy to weigh in.
“What is understood, to a certain extent, doesn’t need to be over-explained,” says Chelsea Miller, founder of Freedom March NYC and a recent “Democracy Hero” honored by nonprofit I am a Voter. “And I think that when we see a woman who is standing in her power, running against a candidate who at every single point has challenged what it means to exist as a woman in America, I think that the symbol of what she is doing has been incredibly just powerful.”
Miller shares with Harris a Jamaican heritage and membership in the prestigious Alpha Kappa Alpha Sorority, Inc. Shesays these points of commonality are meaningful to her on a personal level, but believes identity-focused campaigning would have registered as tone deaf to a lot of women: “This idea of being the first is not enough when there are so many women across the country who are living in states with abortion bans; when there are so many women across the country who go into the workplace and still experience sexism and gender pay disparities.”
Sinha and Miller believe that though Harris has not emphasized her identity in her campaign, it informs her policy proposals—which include restoring reproductive health access and a Medicare benefit to cover home healthcare for seniors. Female voters appear to be paying attention: According to the final NBC News poll before the election, there is a 34-point net gap between male and female voters, with men breaking for former President Trump 58%-40%, an 18-point margin, and women supporting the VP 57%-41%, a 16-point margin (though this means that 41% of women are supporting Trump). The issue voters in this poll trust Harris on the most? Abortion.
The fact that this is the first national election since Roe v. Wade was overturned in 2022’s landmark Dobbs decision has had a profound impact on many women, including ones campaigning for Harris in swing states. That includes everyone from George W. Bush’s daughter Barbara, who traveled to Pennsylvania, and billionaire Jamie Dimon’s wife, Judith Kent, who was recently in Michigan on Harris’ behalf. Billionaire Melinda French Gates, an independent who had never endorsed a candidate before this election, cited women’s reproductive rights as the reason she stepped into the fray.
The most powerful female celebrities are also doing their part. Beyoncé Knowles, one of America’s richest self-made women, opened for Harris at an October 25 rally in Houston, saying, “I’m not here as a celebrity… I’m here as a mother. A mother who cares, deeply, about the world my children and all of our children live in. A world where we have the freedom to control our bodies.”
Meanwhile, a whisper campaign waged on post-it notes inside bathroom stalls has been reminding women in swing states that their vote is private—their Trump-supporting husbands needn’t know if their wives vote for Harris. This whisper turned into a scream last week, when a Julia Roberts-narrated ad came out for Harris and alluded to the bevy of reproductive health restrictions across the country: “In the one place in America where women still have the right to choose, you can vote any way you want.” (Some men on the right are, to put it mildly, not thrilled about this.) Among others who have spoken out loudly: Rihanna, Alicia Keys, Lady Gaga and Jennifer Lopez. And perhaps the endorsement that made the most noise came from billionaire pop star Taylor Swift.
“Whether she leans into it or not, this really is the battle of the sexes,” says Poppy Northcutt, an attorney and engineer who in 1968 became the first woman to work inside of NASA’s Mission Control. Today, at 81, Northcutt is a member of the 2024 Forbes 50 Over 50 list and an election judge in Texas. In spite of her accomplishments, she does not hesitate to say that the gender of the U.S. president does matter and that a female president could have made a difference in her life and career.
“At the time I entered the workforce, women were earning about 53 cents on the dollar as compared to men,” Northcutt says. “Women couldn’t have a credit card in their own name. They couldn’t get a bank loan in their own name… Having a woman as president, that just would not have been the way it was.”
Like Equality Now’s Sinha and Freedom March NYC’s Miller, Northcutt believes in the power of Harris’ image as a leader to shape future generations of female leaders—she herself has heard from female scientists who say they were inspired to get into science after seeing media coverage of Northcutt in the 60s—and calls it “extraordinary.” But, she continues, it didn’t have to be.
“My expectation was that we would’ve had this happening 20 or 30 years ago,” she says. “So it’s more like, why is it taking this long?”