On the arduous climb toward the “highest, hardest glass ceiling,” female presidential candidates persisted and resisted. They promised they were unbought and unbossed. Most of all, they believed the nation was ready for them. And, one by one, they were proven wrong.

在向着“最高、最硬的玻璃天花板”艰难攀登的过程中，女性总统候选人坚持不懈，奋力抗争。她们承诺不会被收买、不会任人差遣。最重要的是，她们认为国家已经准备好迎接她们。然而，一次又一次，事实证明她们错了。

The United States has been led by men for all of its 248 years, and that will continue for at least four more. On Wednesday, Vice President Kamala Harris became the latest woman to fail to break the gender barrier to the presidency, and the second to be defeated by Donald J. Trump.

建国248年来，美国一直由男性领导，这种情况至少还会持续四年。周三，副总统贺锦丽成为最新一位未能打破通往总统之路上性别障碍的女性，也是第二位被特朗普击败的女性。

Across the country, on text chains, during their commutes, in offices, with friends and family, women were processing the sting of another loss. Mothers consoled their daughters. Others tried to figure out how to explain what it meant, to their loved ones and to themselves, that Ms. Harris had been defeated by a man like Mr. Trump — who had bragged about stripping away the rights of women, about grabbing them by their genitals, and who had been held liable for sexual abuse.

在全国各地，在短信往来中、在通勤途中、在办公室里、在与朋友和家人在一起时，女性都在试图消化又一次失败带来的刺痛。母亲们安慰着女儿们。其他人则试图弄清楚如何向亲人和自己解释贺锦丽被特朗普这样的男性击败意味着什么——一位曾大谈特谈剥夺女性权利、吹嘘抓女性生殖器，并曾被判性虐罪名成立的男性。

“I’m terrified by him, to be honest,” said Nicole Saylor, an independent voter in Hendersonville, N.C., who has voted Democratic in the past few elections. “And I’m terrified that I live in a country where 51 percent of the people voted for someone who is bigoted and misogynistic. I’m terrified that half of the country thinks it’s OK.”

“说实话，他让我感到恐惧，”北卡罗来纳州亨德森维尔的独立选民妮科尔·塞勒说，在过去几次选举中，她都投票给了民主党。“我恐惧的是我生活在一个51%的人投票给一个偏执和厌女的人的国家。我恐惧的是全国半数人认为这是可以接受的。”

Ms. Harris’s loss brought many women a wave of sadness and pain, to be sure. But this time, there was another emotion at play. When Hillary Clinton lost to Mr. Trump in 2016, the anger and shock had been so palpable that it sparked a pink-hatted protest movement. Now, faced with the reality that Mr. Trump had been swept back into office with a broader electoral mandate than before, women across the country expressed grim resignation that their country was more welcoming to a second Trump term than to the idea of a woman leader.

可以肯定的是，贺锦丽的失败给许多女性带来了悲伤和痛苦。但这一次，还有另一种情绪。2016年希拉里·克林顿败给特朗普时，人们明显的愤怒和震惊引发了一场戴粉色帽子的抗议运动。现在，特朗普得以大张旗鼓重返白宫，在选举中得到的授权甚至比上一次更大，面对这样的现实，全国各地的女性都表达了无奈的认命：她们的国家更欢迎特朗普的第二任期，而不是由女性担任领导人的想法。

“It’s just nothingness in my head. I can’t look ahead,” said Abby Clark, 42, who does environmental advocacy work in Detroit. “I don’t know how to plan. I can’t picture the world we’ll be in and what it will really be like. I just know that it will be difficult and hard.”

“我脑子里一片空白。我无法展望未来，”42岁的底特律环保倡导工作者艾比·克拉克说。“我不知道如何规划。我无法想象我们将身处的世界，也无法想象它到底会是什么样子。我只知道会很艰难。”

Delivering her concession speech at Howard University, Ms. Harris did not speak about her loss in terms of gender or race. There was no talk of a glass ceiling. Instead, Ms. Harris spoke directly to the young voters who had gathered to see her.

在霍华德大学发表败选演说时，贺锦丽没有谈到她在性别或种族方面的失利，也没有谈到玻璃天花板，而是直接向聚集在一起来观看她演说的年轻选民喊话。

“Don’t ever stop trying to make the world a better place, you have power,” Ms. Harris said. “You have power. And don’t you ever listen when anyone tells you something is impossible because it has never been done before.”

“永远不要停止让世界变得更美好的努力，你们有力量，”贺锦丽说。“你们有力量。当有人告诉你，某事是不可能做到的，因为以前从未有人做过，你千万不要听信。”

Throughout her 15-week campaign, Ms. Harris, a Black and South Asian woman, had tried to pivot away from questions about the historical significance of her candidacy to her desire to serve as a president for “all Americans” — a strategy that freed her to challenge Mr. Trump on matters of policy and character. By the time Election Day arrived, she had taken her gender and her opponent’s name out of her closing argument altogether, casting her fight as one about embracing a more united future.

在为期15周的竞选活动中，身为黑人和南亚裔的贺锦丽一直试图将话题从她参选的历史意义转移到她想成为“所有美国人”的总统的愿望上——这一策略使她能够自由地在政策和品格问题上挑战特朗普。到选举日到来时，她已经将自己的性别和对手的名字从结辩演说中完全去除，将自己的斗争描绘成一场拥抱更团结未来的斗争。

Ms. Harris and her party had bet it all on appealing to women by attacking Mr. Trump’s character and reminding them that he was proud to have appointed three Supreme Court justices who helped overturn Roe v. Wade, ending the constitutional right to abortion.

贺锦丽和她的政党将赌注押在了吸引女性上，她攻击特朗普的品格，提醒她们特朗普以任命了三名最高法院大法官为傲，这些大法官帮助推翻了罗诉韦德案裁决，结束了宪法赋予的堕胎权。

She showed clips of Mr. Trump’s bizarre behavior at her political rallies, and focused on his disparaging comments about women, minorities and political opponents in the final stretch. She invited women who had been harmed by restrictive abortion bans to take the stage at her events. And she and her advisers had been hopeful that Mr. Trump’s own rallies would be a reminder of his track record with women.

她在政治集会上播放了特朗普怪异行为的片段，并重点讲述了他在最后阶段对女性、少数族裔和政治对手的贬损言论。她邀请那些因堕胎禁令而受到伤害的女性在她的活动中登台。她和她的顾问们一直希望特朗普自己的集会能提醒人们他对待女性的过往记录。

Senator Elizabeth Warren, a Massachusetts Democrat who for ran president in 2020, framed the loss as one that stung but one that still represented progress in the slow march toward a woman in the White House.

曾在2020年竞选总统的马萨诸塞州民主党参议员伊丽莎白·沃伦表示，这次失败让她感到痛苦，但仍然代表着女性在入主白宫的缓慢进程中取得了进步。

“It is enormously disappointing not to make it across the finish line in 2024,” said Ms. Warren, who had vied for the Democratic nomination in a field that included Senator Amy Klobuchar of Minnesota and Ms. Harris. “But we’ve come a long way in just a decade, and we’re not giving up.”

“未能在2024年冲过终点线，这令人非常失望，”沃伦说，她曾与明尼苏达州参议员艾米·克洛布彻和贺锦丽竞争民主党提名。“但我们在短短十年内取得了长足进步，我们不会放弃。”

For his part, Mr. Trump made an aggressive play for male voters, and at times he used misogynistic language to describe Ms. Harris, insulting her intelligence and claiming she lacked the stamina to lead the country. At a rally in North Carolina in the last days of the campaign, he chuckled at a remark shouted by a rallygoer that insinuated Ms. Harris had been a prostitute. “This place is amazing,” he said.

特朗普在竞选中积极争取男性选民的支持，有时使用带有性别歧视的语言形容贺锦丽，侮辱她的智力并声称她缺乏领导国家所需的耐力。竞选的最后几天，在北卡罗来纳州的一场集会上，一名观众大声发表了一句暗示贺锦丽曾是妓女的言论，特朗普听后笑了笑并说：“这里真是太棒了。”

Ms. Harris did not respond to any of it.

贺锦丽没有做出任何回应。

Some women who supported Mr. Trump argued that Ms. Harris’s loss had little to do with gender.

一些支持特朗普的女性认为，贺锦丽的失败与性别关系不大。

“I think America is ready for the right female president,” said Fanchon Blythe, a Trump supporter and a Republican committeewoman who owns a nail salon in Lincoln, Neb. “Kamala was not the right one.” She said that Tulsi Gabbard, a former Democratic congresswoman who became a Republican and endorsed Mr. Trump, would make a good one.

“我认为美国已经准备好迎接合适的女总统了，”特朗普支持者、共和党选区委员会成员范琼·布莱斯说，她在内布拉斯加州林肯市经营一家美甲沙龙。“贺锦丽不是那个合适的人。“她表示，图尔西·加巴德会是一个不错的人选。加巴德曾是民主党众议员，后来加入共和党并支持特朗普。

Christian Ramirez, 34, an executive assistant at Arizona State University who lives in Phoenix, said she had been a lifelong Democrat until the 2020 election, when she “jumped ship” and voted for Mr. Trump. She voted for him again in 2024, saying that Democrats had lost her on a number of issues.

34岁的克里斯蒂安·拉米雷斯是亚利桑那州立大学的一名行政助理，住在菲尼克斯。她说自己在2020年大选前一直都是民主党人，当时她转投阵营，支持了特朗普，今年再次投票给他。她表示民主党在很多议题上失去了自己的支持。

“They were trying to make it, ‘Oh, Trump’s against women. Kamala’s pro-women,’” she said. “But I don’t think that’s what it comes down to. It comes down to a lot more policies than just the abortion.”

“他们试图营造出‘哦，特朗普反对女性，贺锦丽支持女性’，”她说。“但我不认为这就是关键所在。这涉及到很多政策，而不仅仅是堕胎。”

大选前的民意调查显示了性别差异，女性更有可能支持贺锦丽，而男性更有可能支持特朗普。

In the end, more than 105 years after the 19th Amendment was passed to bar states from denying women the right to vote, and 59 years after the Voting Rights Act was passed to ensure that all Black women and others could exercise that right, Americans again decided against sending a woman to the White House.

最终，在禁止各州剥夺女性投票权的《第十九条修正案》通过105年、确保所有黑人女性及其他人都能行使投票权的《投票权法案》通过59年后，美国人再次决定不将女性送入白宫。

Ms. Harris had been deliberate in trying to get Americans to see her in the role. She stood beside President Volodymyr Zelensky of Ukraine, checked up on people in states hit by hurricanes and delivered her campaign’s closing argument in front of the White House.

贺锦丽一直试图让美国人看到她所扮演的角色。她与乌克兰总统弗拉基米尔·泽连斯基站在一起，走访飓风受灾州，并在白宫前发表竞选活动的结语。

As they parsed the results of an election that had shown a drift toward Mr. Trump among nearly every voter demographic group, Democrats were soul-searching on Wednesday, questioning how much Ms. Harris’s gender factored into her loss.

周三，在对选举结果——几乎每个选民群体都有倒向特朗普的趋势——进行分析时，民主党人做了反思，探讨性别在多大程度上导致了贺锦丽的失败。

“I think it all mattered,” said Jane Kleeb, the chair of the Nebraska Democratic Party. “Race, gender, city, rural, etc. We’ve run a battleground strategy for 20 years. It’s not working.”

“我认为一切都有影响，“内布拉斯加州民主党主席简·克雷布说。“种族、性别、城市、乡村等等。我们用了20年的战场策略，没起作用。”

上周，贺锦丽与北卡罗来纳州夏洛特的支持者在一起。

The United States lags behind several other nations — Britain, Germany, Israel, India, Canada and, this year, Mexico — which have chosen women as leaders. Despite the long wait, America is far from alone. Men do still run the world, numerically. Only about a third of the countries in the United Nations have ever had a woman head of the government. Just 13 of the body’s 193 member countries are currently led by women, according to the Pew Research Center.

美国在选择女性领导人方面落后于多个国家——英国、德国、以色列、印度、加拿大以及今年的墨西哥。尽管等待漫长，美国并非孤例。从数字上看，男性仍然主导世界。联合国只有大约三分之一的国家曾有过女性政府首脑。根据皮尤研究中心，目前联合国193个成员国中只有13个由女性领导。

Eight years ago, Ms. Clinton, a former first lady, senator and secretary of state, won the popular vote but lost the Electoral College to Mr. Trump. In her concession speech, Ms. Clinton said she hoped that a woman would come along and shatter the glass ceiling “sooner than we might think right now.”

八年前，作为前第一夫人、参议员和国务卿的希拉里·克林顿赢得了普选，但在选举人团票上败给了特朗普。在败选演讲中，希拉里表示，她希望一位女性能够“比我们此刻想象的更早”出现，打破玻璃天花板。

That wait continues. And this time, the road ahead seems more uncertain.

等待仍在继续。而这一次，前路似乎更加不确定。