For the second time in U.S. history, a major party nominated a woman for President, and for the second time, she came up short. Vice President Kamala Harris' loss to Donald Trump in the 2024 U.S. presidential election echoed Hillary Clinton's defeat in 2016.

Many women saw the opportunity of having the first woman president as a powerful signal of women's advancement in leadership and society, and now question what the loss means and what role gender may have played.

But the idea of electing the first female president didn't strongly motivate people to turn out. Only 10% of voters called the historic potential of the Harris campaign the most important factor in their decision, according to AP VoteCast, a sweeping survey of more than 120,000 voters nationwide between Oct. 28 and Nov. 5. An additional 25% considered it an important factor but not decisive. 

Still, Harris captured 48.1% of the over 140 million votes Americans cast in 2024, according to NBC News.

While many Harris supporters are saddened by the result and concerned about what her experience means for future female candidates, a range of political analysts, academics, and U.S. women CNBC Make It spoke to remain cautiously optimistic. They don't expect that America will have to wait much longer for a female president. 

'I think a woman could do a great job as president. I don't think she is the right woman'

The results of this year's election shouldn't be understood to mean that Americans don't ever want a female president, says NBC News Capitol Hill correspondent Ali Vitali, author of the 2022 book "Electable: Why America Hasn't Put a Woman in the White House … Yet." 

The compressed timeline of Harris's campaign — and her association with President Joe Biden, whose approval ratings have long been underwater — didn't help to convince voters that she was the right candidate for the job. 

"Many Americans didn't know who Harris was heading into the election, and if they did, they just knew her as the vice president of Joe Biden, an unpopular incumbent," adds Vitali.

"Forming your own political identity is so important for any candidate, whether you're a woman or not," Vitali continues. "Harris only had 107 days to run a successful campaign." 

Close to 30% of voters said they wanted a major overhaul in how the country is run, according to AP VoteCast.

As one of the first Gen Z women to hold public office in the U.S., 26-year-old Bushra Amiwala of Chicago would love to see more female representation in government. But even she was conflicted. "I voted for Vice President Harris, but there was so much pause in that decision — I debated it for weeks," she says. 

Amiwala felt indecisive about Harris in part because "she's been part of the same administration that's been involved in the Israel-Palestine conflict, and as a Muslim American, that's an important issue to me," she says.

Harris' loss has not diminished Amiwala's optimism that the U.S. could elect its first female president soon. "I think Americans are ready for a woman president, it just wasn't meant to be Harris," Amiwala says. "I'm excited to see what the 2028 election holds." 

Trump voter JoyAnna Chabaka, a 48-year-old real estate broker in Sioux Falls, South Dakota, saw the President-elect as a strong leader and family man. She hopes to see a woman in the White House; she just didn't believe Harris was the right candidate.

"I think a woman could do a great job as president. I don't think she is the right woman," she says.

"I really wanted to support [Harris], especially as someone who is also biracial," she adds. But the Harris campaign's messaging around the vice president's race and identity felt inauthentic.

"That's where she lost me," Chabaka says. "She might have had a good message [in the campaign], but I think it got lost in some of the culture or identity politics her team used."

"Something I also struggled with, too, is that she wasn't a mom," Chabaka continues. "I didn't feel like she understood what it was like being a parent in this economy under her administration."

'People still don't trust us to lead'

A wealth of research shows that women leaders — especially those who compete at the highest echelons of political power — have to walk a tightrope. If they make traditional displays of power, they may be labeled as too direct or aggressive. If they appear agreeable and friendly, they can be denigrated as weak, lightweight, and incompetent. 

For Harris, a woman of color, the tightrope was even thinner, Vitali says: Harris had to face both racist and sexist tropes throughout the election.

"Some people didn't vote for Harris for her politics, or because they were frustrated with Biden," Vitali says. "But at the same time, some voters might not even be able to recognize their unconscious bias around not voting for a woman, specifically a woman of color."

Natasha Bowman, a 46-year-old human resources executive in New York, theorizes that Harris' identity as a Black and South Asian woman played a role in her defeat. As a Black woman herself, Bowman says she has to work "twice as hard for half the recognition."

"What Harris' loss reaffirmed to me is that you can have a woman of color with a flawless resume, and people will still think she's less qualified than a white man with a criminal record, simply because of her gender and the color of her skin," she says. "The millions of people that voted for Trump sent a very clear message: They want a country that is male-centered and white-centered." 

Alejandra Toro, a 29-year-old project manager from Charlotte, North Carolina, felt similar heartache.

The morning after the election, Toro sat down at her makeup table to film a "get ready with me" TikTok video, as she does every day, through tears. She decided to post it, hoping it would comfort other disheartened women.

Within hours, her video garnered more than 4 million views. 

"If Harris — smart, well-spoken, and experienced — wasn't 'qualified' enough, who is?" Toro tells CNBC Make It. "As a woman of color, it's disheartening, it almost feels like people still don't trust us to lead."

'Maybe a Republican woman would see greater success'

Sexism was a small but significant factor that worked against Harris, according to Laura Kray, a psychologist and director of the Center for Equity, Gender, and Leadership at UC Berkley's Haas School of Business. 

"When people think of the most powerful men in the world, whether it be CEOs or those in political office, it's men who control resources, whereas the most powerful women tend to have less actual power and more social status," Kray says. She points to the Harris campaign's active presence on TikTok and the endorsements she received from celebrities with huge, devoted fan bases like Beyoncé and Taylor Swift. 

While Americans may support women's advancement in principle, "the outcome of the election suggests, to me, that our society remains more comfortable with women in supporting roles rather than the primary decision-makers, or controlling resources." 

Progress toward gender parity in U.S. government has been slow and inconsistent. Women still make up under 25% of governors and under 30% of elected members in Congress, according to the Center for American Women and Politics.

It's too soon to pinpoint the main reason Trump won and Harris lost, despite dozens of exit polls and think pieces attempting to do so, Kray says.

"We can pick apart the particularities of these candidates but we really won't know what ultimately drove one to win and the other to lose," she says. "Democrats have succeeded in getting a woman vice president into office, but not a president. … Maybe a Republican woman would see greater success in a presidential election."

That said, female candidates from all parties face an "imagination barrier," Vitali says, which means many voters struggle to envision a woman as president. This, combined with underlying biases, complicates campaigns for women. 

But every campaign helps change that reality. Indeed, Vitali sees this as a clear silver lining to Harris' historic candidacy, regardless of the outcome. 

"The good news here is that once again, a woman ran for the highest office in the land and millions of Americans voted for her, whether they cared about her gender or not. That's a really positive thing," she says.

"Win or loss, she's expanding the mindset, the purview, of what people can imagine in the Oval Office." 

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