For the United States to have a woman president come January would be consequential, perhaps even transformational. U.S. Vice President Kamala Harris has not emphasized her gender or her biracial identity during her campaign or, indeed, her career. Like other women leaders I have interviewed in the past two years and all over the world, from Denmark and Estonia to Malawi and Nigeria, she wants to be seen simply as a leader who happens to be a woman. Forty percent of countries have had a woman leader, but Harris’s governance of one of the world’s most powerful states would send a thundering message across the globe. According to the 2023 Gender Social Norms Index, a UN project that compiles survey data from more than 90 countries, 49 percent of people around the world still think that men make better political leaders than women. A Harris presidency would be an opportunity to put this persistent prejudice to rest—and to give women and girls everywhere the confidence that they, too, can run for and win high office.

The message that a Harris victory would send would be even more resonant at this existential juncture in U.S. and world history. Americans face a stark choice between Harris and former President Donald Trump. Harris is a former prosecutor who emphasizes that her entire career has been devoted to upholding U.S. law; her opponent, Trump, has blatantly disregarded the Constitution, laws, and social norms that have long defined American democracy. Many U.S. allies and partners are now striving to defend their democracies against internal and external threats while the autocrats who lead many of the world’s largest countries are trampling on human rights, invading their neighbors, and destabilizing the rules-based global order. A Trump victory would be a boon to this axis of autocrats, whereas Harris would undoubtedly champion the defense of democracy and firmly position the United States on the side of international norms. She would bolster those fighting against tyranny, including the democratic movements in Belarus, Russia, Venezuela, and elsewhere that have women at their helms.

As chief executive of a superpower, Harris would also be able to quiet lingering doubts that women are equipped to make decisions of war and peace. In a Pew Research Center poll conducted in 2018, 35 percent of Americans thought that men were better at dealing with the security and defense portfolio than women, compared with the six percent that thought women were better equipped than men. There are reasons to think Harris could torpedo that sexist trope. From the Senate Intelligence Committee to the White House Situation Room, Harris is well acquainted with top-secret details of national security threats and the programs designed to address them. Her portfolio as vice president has included space policy, artificial intelligence, and regional challenges in Africa, Asia, Europe, and Latin America. The past four years, in other words, have given Harris more understanding of global concerns than that of most incoming presidents. In addition to her familiarity with the issues of the day, she has demonstrated the essential qualities for effective decision-making in crisis, including a judicious temperament and a methodical approach to seeking evidence, challenging arguments, considering risks, and weighing options.

Challenging stereotypes and inspiring a new generation of women leaders would be important accomplishments of a Harris presidency. But her administration could do even more. She could also use her experience and the insights afforded by her identity to advance peace and prosperity at a turbulent time, adopting an approach to global affairs that expands alliances, embraces global governance reform to bring in new voices and ideas, and harnesses the undertapped potential of half the planet. From reproductive health to economic participation to gender-based violence, matters identified as women’s issues are too often granted less attention and less funding than they deserve. Making them integral parts of policy can go a long way toward addressing many of the economic, political, and social problems that ail the United States and countries across the world.

FACING THE AUTOCRATS

From the beginning of her presidency, Harris would have to deal with autocrats who think they can cow a woman leader. The infamously sexist Russian President Vladimir Putin, who regularly derides women’s weakness and once tried to intimidate German Chancellor Angela Merkel by bringing a dog to their meeting (Merkel has a known fear of dogs), is almost certain to test Harris’s hard-power mettle early on. During the campaign, Trump has attempted to discredit her by claiming that world leaders such as Putin and Chinese President Xi Jinping would “walk all over her” and treat her “like a play toy.”

Russia’s punishing invasion of Ukraine, which has killed 80,000 Ukrainians and destroyed the country’s infrastructure, would demand Harris’s attention right out of the gate. She has given no indication of backing down in the face of Putin’s threats. In public speeches and in meetings with Ukrainian and other European leaders, Harris has pledged to defend Ukraine and Europe against aggression. To stop the bloody war of attrition and work toward a just peace, Harris may (and should) take the faster and bolder action that Ukraine has been pleading for, going beyond what President Joe Biden, who has delayed the transfer of U.S. weapons to Ukraine and limited their use, has been willing to do. She could also support an even larger role for Europe in this effort. The European Union’s leaders, particularly European Commission President Ursula von der Leyen and new foreign policy chief Kaja Kallas, the former prime minister of Estonia, offer strong partnership. While the Biden administration dallied on further aid to Ukraine, for instance, the EU stepped up in September to provide cash-strapped Ukraine a $39 billion loan, backed by frozen Russian assets.

Harris, the EU officials, and other women leaders in Denmark, Moldova, the Balkans, and the Baltics can together force into retirement the worn-out “iron lady” epithet, which is often lobbed at women leaders who stand up to aggressors and used to paint them as wantonly interventionist. The simple fact is that when attacked, countries must defend themselves. This is true no matter who is in charge. Often, they must defend their neighbors and friends as well. European leaders are backing Ukraine as a matter of self-defense, and for Harris to stand arm in arm with them would demonstrate far more fortitude than Trump. On the campaign trail, the former president has promised to end the war before he even takes office, and his running mate, JD Vance, has hinted that a Trump administration would push Kyiv to give up its NATO aspirations and relinquish claims to its territory—in essence, capitulating to Putin.

Pushing back against Russian aggression is a necessary element of U.S. foreign policy. Should Harris win and follow this path, she would be doing so in pursuit of American interests, not because she is an “iron lady” who needs to silence doubts about a woman president’s strength. Supporting Ukraine alongside European allies would send an important signal to Xi and the leaders of other rising powers who may be tempted to violate their neighbors’ borders or even attack the United States directly. It would bolster U.S. deterrence, reducing the risk of an expanding global conflict. And by establishing her willingness to take firm stands, Harris could gain latitude to reset U.S. China policy in ways that avoid an escalating cold war, widen the role of U.S. allies and partners, and prioritize working with Beijing on pressing global issues, such as the looming threat of climate change.

Managing competition with a rising China is the United States’ principal foreign policy imperative. It is also among the most challenging. Harris, as president, would be well positioned to balance the current approach, which leans heavily on U.S. hard power, with a greater emphasis on strengthening U.S. alliances and partnerships in the region and offering an alternative to Chinese economic, technological, and political influence around the world. She has already helped lay some of the groundwork in her four visits to Asia as vice president, engaging with U.S. allies and partners there. Harris, not Biden, made a warmly received trip to Africa last year and led the Digital Transformation With Africa initiative, which has mobilized $8 billion in private and public-sector investment on the continent and created channels for engaging its youth, women, and diaspora. Similarly, her work in Central America has generated over $5 billion in private-sector investment to provide economic opportunity in that region. All this offers a good starting point for a Harris foreign policy that places a higher priority on outreach to countries across the developing world and on crafting practical solutions to meet their needs.

OPPORTUNITY FOR ALL

A President Harris could redefine U.S. foreign policy in terms of human security, addressing the interconnected engines of climate change, displacement, famine, and war at a time of historic levels of conflict and forced migration. This would build on the initiatives she has overseen as vice president and give concrete form to her campaign commitment to take a people-centered approach to policy. Pursuing this direction both at home and abroad would also draw on her own identity as a Black woman and the daughter of two immigrants from India and Jamaica. Harris would have early opportunities to display forward-looking leadership on climate change and global governance reform. Once elected, she could endorse the bold proposals of two other women leaders: Barbadian Prime Minister Mia Mottley’s Bridgetown Initiative 3.0, an ambitious plan to build climate resilience through international finance reform and long-term lending, and U.S. UN Ambassador Linda Thomas-Greenfield’s plan to expand UN Security Council membership to include two permanent seats for African countries and an elected seat for a small-island developing nation. By championing these efforts, Harris would unmistakably signal her intent to revamp the world order to make it more representative of its members and more responsive to their needs.

Rather than treating women’s issues as addenda to any given government policy, a Harris administration could finally recognize their central importance to addressing global problems. As women and girls represent more than half of the world’s population, the wider benefits of uplifting them should be obvious. Harris has shown that she thinks in these terms, too, declaring that “the status of women is the status of democracy” in a UN speech toward the beginning of her vice presidency. Their current status is not good: on average, women are poorer, less healthy, more likely to be victims of violence and displacement, less educated, and less politically empowered than men. The annual World Economic Forum’s “Global Gender Gap Report,” which calculates gender disparities across these dimensions, estimated in its 2024 edition that at the current rate of progress, it will take 134 years for women to reach parity with men.

Practical policies to close the gender gap would benefit not just women and girls but also entire societies. The World Bank’s “Women, Business and the Law 2024” report estimates that creating equal opportunities for women’s employment and entrepreneurship could raise the global GDP by more than 20 percent and double the global economic growth rate over the next decade. And landmark research by Valerie Hudson and other scholars in the WomanStats Project found that countries where women have fewer rights are likely to be more violent, impoverished, and unhealthy. As vice president, Harris has been closely involved in efforts to improve women’s status around the world. Initiatives she has led in Africa, Asia, and elsewhere included more than $2.4 billion in investment in 2023 to support women’s employment, business formation, and digital access, and to lower other barriers to women’s economic participation. Building on the work of the Biden administration, a Harris administration could further expand the United States’ and its partners’ private-sector and government contributions in these areas, producing tangible economic benefits across the world.

Investing in women’s health can also yield wider economic dividends. According to a McKinsey Health Institute study published this year, every dollar invested in improving women’s health care would translate to three additional dollars in economic output, adding $1 trillion annually to global GDP. Harris has been at the forefront of domestic policies in this area as vice president, leading the Biden administration’s charge to restore the right to abortion after the Supreme Court decision overturning Roe v. Wade ended half a century of nationwide legal access to the medical procedure. Beyond health care, national family leave and child care policies are also necessary to allow women to work and families to thrive. The United States is one of only six countries in the world without some kind of guaranteed paid family leave, which in many Western countries includes generous paternal leave. The United States also grievously lags its peers when it comes to child care, with the government providing an average of only $500 in support per child, compared with the $14,436 average among Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development countries.

By addressing these needs at home, Harris could place the United States in a much stronger position to champion women’s rights globally and confront the epidemic of violence against them. Early in her legal career, Harris specialized in prosecuting gendered violence and sex crimes, including crimes against children, giving her experience with and authority on these issues. The global rate of femicide has risen continuously over the past two decades, according to the United Nations. In 2018, the humanitarian agency CARE estimated that violence against women and girls exacted a cost of approximately two percent of global GDP—a figure that is likely higher today, given the increased prevalence of conflict. As vice president, Harris has championed initiatives to fund documentation of war crimes involving sexual violence, to provide assistance to survivors, and to apply sanctions on alleged perpetrators in seven countries—the first time U.S. sanctions have been used for this purpose. Her presidency could expand on this progress.

An urgent part of reducing violence against women is addressing its manifestation in the digital space, where artificial intelligence is making existing problems worse. Women and girls suffer disproportionately from harassment, stalking, doxxing, sextortion, impersonation, and online threats that inflict real-world harm, leading to physical violence, depression, or suicide. Harris has experienced this problem firsthand as the subject of more online attacks than any other American politician at the time during her run for president in the 2020 Democratic primary, and the target of continued abuse ever since. She spearheaded the Biden administration’s efforts to develop guidelines for safe and responsible artificial intelligence and secured voluntary commitments from leading AI developers to prevent sexual abuse that uses AI-generated images. Australia, the United Kingdom, and the European Union have pioneered online safety laws that include requirements for companies to assess and mitigate the risks of gendered violence, provide transparent reporting, and pay hefty fines for noncompliance. These laws can provide useful models for a Harris administration to back U.S. legislation that addresses the problems caused by biased training data and recommendation algorithms, lax or nonexistent corporate safety policies, and a growing torrent of harmful text, images, video, and virtual technology.

The Harris campaign’s central message has been its pledge to govern for all Americans in a bid to heal the country’s divisions. This commitment should include measures to address the needs of women and girls, but it should also grapple with the growing belief among young men that gender equality amounts to discrimination against them and threatens their prospects. As president, Harris would need to convince the next generation that progress is not a zero-sum game. Part of the solution can come through her proposals to provide economic opportunities for all through measures to lower inflation, address housing shortages, and support small-business formation. But specific measures are also needed to reduce hostility to gender equality. Parents, teachers, and other influential figures can all help fight prejudice, but online programming, such as the work the nonprofit organization Equimundo has done to promote positive gender attitudes, is also needed to reach young men and boys in a social media environment that is rife with sexism.

A Harris presidency has the potential to get the big picture right at a critical time. Harris has repeatedly and eloquently reminded Americans that more unites them than divides them, including during the presidential debate when, in response to Trump’s racist and sexist remarks, she declared, “We all have the same dreams and aspirations and want a president who invests in those, not in hate and division.” Harris, of course, would not be a president without flaws. She would certainly make mistakes and perhaps fail in consequential ways—as any president is bound to do. But in this regard, she would break gender norms just by being a normal leader. The expectation that women need to be twice as good as men to deserve a seat at the table is merely another bias to be overcome. So is the tendency to criticize a woman who, like Harris, displays emotion, strength, or decisiveness in the line of duty. Her presidency could show these traits for what they are: qualities of well-intentioned, capable leaders.