The women didn’t win it.

Despite high hopes that women, particularly college-educated women and young women, would turn out in numbers big enough to win the election for Kamala Harris, America has passed on its second historic opportunity to elect a female president.

For the second time the US electorate has turned its back on a female presidential candidate.Credit: Marija Ercegovac

If we thought the desolation in 2016 was bad, when a fresher Donald Trump trounced the highly qualified Hillary Clinton, it is worse now.

The dire consequences of abortion bans for women’s health are now evident, and will continue under a Trump presidency.

The Trump campaign amounted to an open-carry licence to misogyny and contempt for femininity.

It gave social permission for the worst kind of sexism and nastiness towards women.

It didn’t matter.

Trump’s closest advisers are mostly men.

The cabinet appointees he is likely to make will be mostly men.

He has talked about giving former independent presidential candidate Robert F Kennedy, an anti-vaxxer, dominion over “women’s health”.

Apart from being a convicted felon, Trump has now been accused by about 27 women of sexual misconduct.

The fact that this barely rated a mention on the election trail is deeply dispiriting.

But it seems........

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