Why suburban women's love of Donald Trump means his victory is certain in sexist USA

Bizarrely, this jaw-dropping, 50-years-out-of-date rhetoric had little negative effect on female voters. Mr Trump received around 44 per cent of their votes in that election – up from 39 per cent four years earlier.

What is absolutely stunning is that a single woman voted for him. Yet they did: more than 70 million of them. Why? Because the US is inherently sexist, and the population, men and women, happily accepts it, fitting the ideal of the 1950s white-picket-fence conservative housewife and her breadwinner husband.

‘Look at that face’

This will be Kamala Harris’s main stumbling block in beating Mr Trump to become the US’s first female leader. Despite the explosion of the #metoo movement, the majority of Americans are happy to turn a blind eye to sexism, especially when it comes to Mr Trump. Last year he was found liable for a sex attack on writer E Jean Carroll in the 1990s and ordered to pay $88 million in damages for the assault and for defaming her.

Meanwhile, he has commented on female politicians’ appearance, saying of Republican rival Carly Fiorina: "Look at that face! Would anyone vote for that? Can you imagine that, the face of our next president?" Yet women still support him, applauding happily as he trotted onto the Republican convention stage last week to James Brown’s “It’s a Man’s Man’s Man’s World”.

And it is. Female workers in the US are roughly four times as likely as men to say they have been treated as if they were not competent because of their gender. Meanwhile, the decision in 2022 by the US Supreme Court to overturn Roe vs Wade, which gave every woman the legal right to an abortion, has left one-in-three women now living in states where abortion is not accessible, according to Planned Parenthood.

US falling behind rest of world

An American friend who recently moved from Washington to the UK fears the “inherent sexism and racism” in her home country could scupper Ms Harris’s chances. Yet she holds out hope that her running could mobilise the younger women and women of colour who may otherwise not turn out to vote. She may be overly optimistic.

Hillary Clinton – who was merely hampered by being a (white) woman, not a woman of colour like Ms Harris, whose parents are from India and Jamaica – could not win the presidency when she stood in 2016. Until Ms Harris’s election as vice-president on a joint ticket with Mr Biden, no female had ever held a role as senior within the US government.

This compares to the UK, not exactly a shining example of equality, where a female Prime Minister was elected first in 1979 and where we have since seen Theresa May and, albeit very briefly, Liz Truss, take the top role, and Scotland, where Nicola Sturgeon was First Minister for nine years. Even Australia, often cited as one of the most sexist of all Western nations, has had a female leader in Prime Minister Julia Gillard.

The US needs to wake up – and catch up with the rest of the world.