The question isn’t whether voters are ready for a woman leader. Vice President Kamala Harris has already passed that milestone.

She has more than proved her integrity, leadership and effectiveness. Every time this sexist trope is used against Harris, voters see it for what it is — a cheap shot intended to keep her from shattering that last glass ceiling over the White House.

A better question is whether voters are ready to support that proven leader, stand behind her when she’s viciously attacked, and be her allies on the campaign trail, and, once elected, in governing.

Women know they are “ready to lead, and leading” every day — there isn’t a challenge they can’t meet or an obstacle too daunting to tackle. And they know that to win in November, Harris will have to overcome centuries of sexism and decades of extremist politics that led to Donald Trump’s rise and return.

To succeed as the first woman president, Harris must depend on a broad coalition of support, one built on shared values and fundamental rights, not partisan bickering.

As the first woman vice president — and the first Black and Asian-American woman — Harris has firsthand experience unlike any other occupant of the White House. But as a candidate, Harris will face what may be the last stand of systemic sexism in our presidential politics.

Sebastian Gorka, a former Trump administration official, used a racist phrase from the 1950s when he said this about Harris: “She’s a DEI hire, right? She’s a woman. She’s colored. Therefore, she’s got to be good.”

Less than a year ago, Pew Research surveyed voter attitudes toward women and political leadership, especially on the importance of electing a woman president and the likelihood voters saw of that happening.

Only one in four said they thought it was extremely or very likely that the U.S. would elect a woman president in their lifetime. When asked why there are fewer women than men in office, more than half (54%) said women need to do more to prove themselves, and 46% said many Americans aren’t ready to elect a woman to high office.

That’s the result of that history of sexism baked into our politics — a history we can and must change to defend our democracy.

Gender will matter in this election, just as it has in so many others — but maybe in a different way.

In 2016, 53% of white women voted for Trump, while 94% of African-American women and 69% of Latinas voted for Hillary Clinton. A repeat of that result could mean defeat for Harris.

Of course, the historic nature of Harris’s candidacy will make gender a central issue in this campaign. Her opponents will try to put her on the defensive and make her explain why her gender isn’t an obstacle. Voters will see through that one, too.

The issue of women in politics shouldn’t be an issue — it should just be a fact. And it certainly shouldn’t be a weapon to diminish and weaken our democracy.

We can’t accept a campaign system where men have a head start and the finish line is placed out of reach for many women.

More and more, today’s voters — especially younger voters — are motivated not by partisanship or personal attacks but by their values, such as the right to vote, reproductive rights, gender equality, pay fairness, and safety in school and the workplace.

Those are the cornerstones of our democracy; women can be just as vigorous defenders of democracy as anyone. If we say that democracy is the “government of the people, by the people and for the people,” then that must include all the people. All of us. Not just, as the Founders believed, other white men like themselves.

These are different times, and we are a different nation, one that we’re still creating and improving. Harris’s presidential candidacy will show how blasting gender bias in politics, along with that last glass ceiling, is a long overdue fix.

Christian F. Nunes is the president of the National Organization for Women. She wrote this for InsideSources.com.

Ohio saw that the right to control your own health choices and bodily autonomy is clear, conspicuous and easily understood.

That’s why Issue 1, which would have made it harder to enshrine abortion rights into the Ohio Constitution, was overwhelmingly defeated, just as other anti-abortion ballot initiatives were voted down in red and purple states such as Michigan, Kentucky and Kansas in 2022.

And that’s why today, the forces and factors that went into the shocking victory in Ohio for abortion rights are poised to play a decisive role in the 2024 elections.

Ohio voters from across the political spectrum recognized that abortion bans have nothing to do with women’s health and everything to do with the power that some politicians want to retain over women’s lives, their futures and their bodily autonomy.

No one wants to live in that kind of society — or see their daughters, granddaughters, nieces and loved ones have to grow up under those conditions.

Voters turned out in record numbers, with 57% voting against the measure, a victory margin of almost 430,000 votes out of more than 3 million cast. Even Ohioans who hadn’t voted in 2022 came out in the summer heat to stand up for their rights and values.

According to Democratic pollster Celinda Lake, “In the early vote alone, there were 30,000 voters who voted in (the) election that hadn’t voted in 2022, and they were largely women and African-American women.”

The test for 2024 is whether those voters will stay engaged in Ohio and across the country. I believe they will.

There’s tremendous energy at the grassroots level to work for the change we need to see in the priorities our lawmakers set — and the ones they ignore. In the year since the Supreme Court overturned Roe v. Wade, 14 states have made abortion illegal, and many more are considering abortion restrictions and bans that make it difficult, if not impossible, to obtain abortion care.

The Ohio vote shows the power of grassroots action, coalition building and common-sense conversations about the issues that matter.

After the results came in from Ohio, abortion rights advocates in Arizona filed a ballot measure to protect those rights in the Arizona Constitution. A 15-week abortion ban was signed into law in 2022 by then-Gov. Doug Ducey, a Republican. At the same time, those pushing for a near-total ban on abortions appealed a court ruling preventing doctors from being prosecuted under a law that’s been on the books since Arizona was a territory.

“We’re just one bad court decision away from a total abortion ban that carries prison time for doctors,” said Arizona Gov. Katie Hobbs, a Democrat who focused on abortion rights during her 2022 campaign.

The need to codify abortion rights into state law couldn’t be more precise — and the stakes in the 2024 election couldn’t be higher. Arizona is just one of a handful of battleground states that could determine the outcome of the presidential election — with a Senate race on the ballot that could determine party control.

And in Ohio, the abortion rights coalition that beat Issue 1 remains in place to make a difference in abortion-rights defender Sen. Sherrod Brown’s re-election campaign.

Abortion will be on the ballot in 2024, from the presidential campaign on down. And so will contraception: As regulatory and court decisions make over-the-counter care more available, candidates are campaigning to enact more restrictions on that access.

The political decisions being made to control women’s bodily autonomy will directly affect those who are already facing the worst discrimination and obstacles to accessing health care. States with the most restrictive abortion bans have some of the highest rates of Black maternal death — as much as 38% greater than in states without abortion restrictions.

A new coalition of values-based voters is emerging, challenging old political assumptions and building centers of strength and effectiveness. Ohio showed us what’s possible — now it’s up to us to show what’s next.

Christian F. Nunes is the president of the National Organization for Women. She wrote this for InsideSources.com.

Right-wing extremists try to deceive voters into thinking that abortion bans won’t negatively affect their lives — whether they know anyone who ever needed the procedure or not. They mischaracterize it as a women’s issue, demonize it as a moral failure, dismiss it as a mere “distraction,” and use it as a reliable dog whistle to rally their base. But before they cast their ballots in a few days, Americans need to understand one obvious fact: Banning abortion affects all of us.

Across the country, we hear stories of ordinary people whose lives were unexpectedly upended by abortion restrictions — many of whom may have even supported these bans. These Americans have become collateral damage to draconian, narrow-minded, misogynistic and hypocritical policies.

According to the Guttmacher Institute, 75% of women who seek abortion services are low-income, and financial insecurity is the most commonly cited reason women seek abortion care. Women can’t fully participate in our workforce or make the critical economic contributions this country needs if they are forced to carry unintended — or non-viable — pregnancies against their will.

Instead, data show that women who are denied abortions are more likely to experience long-term poverty. The Turnaway Study examined the effects of unwanted pregnancies on women and children and concluded that women who were “denied an abortion had almost four times greater odds of a household income below the federal poverty level and three times greater odds of being unemployed.”

Despite already facing systemic misogyny and wage disparities, women are one of America’s greatest economic resources. Limiting women’s options in life through restrictions like abortion bans can contribute to severe economic decline. But ensuring they have equal access to opportunity by protecting their bodily autonomy can catalyze prolonged and sustained growth. According to a recent report from Moody’s, the United States could get a “$1 trillion boost over the next 10 years if female labor market participation grew to the levels seen in other developed economies.”

Before the COVID pandemic, census data revealed that “women-owned employer firms reported nearly $1.8 trillion in sales, shipments, receipts or revenue and employed over 10.1 million workers with an annual payroll of $388.1 billion in 2018.”

But, discussions of women’s economic empowerment are completely moot if we deny them equal access to basic but critical medical care for treatable conditions like rheumatoid arthritis. RA is extremely painful when not managed with medications like methotrexate, which has been a standard treatment for the disease for nearly 60 years — but it can also be used to terminate pregnancies in high dosages.

Despite its classification as an essential medication by the World Health Organization due to its versatility in treating a variety of conditions — from Crohn’s disease to leukemia — some medical providers are refusing (or are too afraid) to refill similar prescriptions for women with autoimmune diseases who are of “child-bearing age,” whether they’re pregnant or ever intend to get pregnant.

And, as if the American health care system didn’t already completely fail and endanger women (for proof, look no further than our shameful maternal mortality rates), abortion bans now put lawyers squarely in operating rooms. Women living in states with abortion restrictions have been forced to continue carrying dead fetuses and have suffered from ectopic pregnancies that ruptured because the doctors had to discuss treatment with lawyers.

How can anyone — regardless of gender — trust the care they receive when providers fear facing life in prison for carrying out life-saving treatments? When doctors take the Hippocratic oath, it isn’t littered with clauses and amendments. “Do no harm” was never meant to be limited by terms and conditions imposed by extremist lawmakers.

While many may argue that archaic policies are pushing us back in time, the intensified attacks on abortion are throwing us into a new, more dangerous era that puts women’s lives at risk and threatens the future of this country.

Christian F. Nunes is the president of the National Organization for Women. She wrote this for InsideSources.com.