Democratic men are stepping up for a woman president by stepping back, at last

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Karrin Vasby Anderson, Colorado State University

(THE CONVERSATION) Women have been running for president of the United States since 1872, and for almost that long people have been asking what women need to do in order to break what Hillary Clinton has called the “highest, hardest glass ceiling” left in American culture.

Almost no one has asked what men need to do in order to remedy the problem that the job has been off-limits to more than 50% of the talent pool since … forever.

At the 2024 Democratic National Convention, that changed. Democratic men made choices that were entirely new, or exceedingly rare, in support of a woman presidential candidate and in service to the nation. It was unprecedented.

As a communication scholar who studies gender and political leadership, I’ve argued that the biggest impediment to electing a woman as president is not a dearth of qualified woman candidates but a collective inability to recognize them as such. The fault is not in the candidates but in American culture.

As it turns out, men in politics were also to blame.

When faced with competitive women as presidential candidates,...