THIS is a man’s world, but the US election could be set to teach us a lesson about the growing political power of women. Kamala Harris may not be the first woman on the ticket but her ascension in the wake of Joe Biden’s reluctant resignation from the race may have marked a seismic shift in who has the power to choose the next president of the United States.

Within just one week of Harris’s endorsement from current president Biden, she has received nearly $200 million of donations – and a significant portion of this has come from powerful white women.

From Melinda French Gates to Jennifer Anniston, America’s female elite have used their influence to back her.

The reason couldn’t be clearer, Harris is putting subjects that female voters care about at the forefront of her campaign by taking clear stances on issues such as abortion and gun control. It comes at a time when women in America are fed up. You only have to look at the overturning of Roe v Wade to see how increased right-wing sensibility has led to the repression of women, endangering their right to accessible healthcare.

Last week a new grassroots campaign group called “White Women for Harris” quite literally broke Zoom when 200,000 women tried to join a campaign call at the same time – a call in which they raised $8m in just 90 minutes.

Speakers highlighted that in 2016, 52% of white women voted for panto villain Donald Trump but only 6% of Black women. They were engaging with an uncomfortable truth: that despite the machismo at the heart of Trump’s rhetoric, white women were instrumental in his 2016 victory, voting at the expense of all women but marginalised women in particular.

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Attendees spoke openly about how inspiration for their organising came from women of colour who have built supporter groups for Harris. They also spoke about how rare solidarity movements were among white women in the US and how all too often they ended up on the wrong side of history, citing slavery, Jim Crow and alt-right movements.

It was an accountability meeting, where white women pledged their support to Harris and marginalised women everywhere.

But why do race and gender matter so much in this election?

American politics is naturally about power but it’s also about maths. Democrats have historically vied for the votes of the white liberal middle class and marginalised communities, while Republicans have focussed on amassing the support of white men and religious conservatives.

They piece each jigsaw to make up the numbers based on how useful they think one religion or race is to their candidate. But the 2016 election showed a serious flaw in the Democrats’ calculations when far more Black men and white women voted for Trump than the establishment was expecting.

Only now that Biden has stepped down are the Democrats starting to build their strategy based on the learnings of 2016. Harris doesn’t need to win the rust belt or the blue collar or the evangelical vote. In theory, she could win the entire thing by winning back those women who voted red.

What I think the White Women for Harris movement can show us is just how successful political organising which recognises the importance of intersectionality – looking at race and gender combined – can be.

At the heart of this movement is not only a form of gender solidarity but an acknowledgement of the power of white women, a group who have historically been told they have no power.

I think these women are reclaiming their political and economic influence and coming to terms with the fact (perhaps for the first time) that they have historically helped to elect far-right leaders. They did this all while profiting from the labour of women of colour, such as Harris, who tried desperately to pull America back from the edge and are now trying to right those wrongs.

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For many of my fellow anti-racist activists it will be too little too late. As much as I am impressed with White Women for Harris (or “Karens for Harris” as it’s been nicknamed) I know that it won’t be enough to shield Harris from the inevitable attacks that are about to come her way. And there are valid critiques of Harris’s politics.

I find myself constantly at odds with her position on Gaza, regurgitating America’s indefensible solidarity with Israel’s violent apartheid regime. Black communities also have reservations about her role in the criminal justice system as California’s attorney general. However, it’s impossible to ignore how scrutiny becomes intensified when the subject is a Black woman. We call this misogynoir – the combined effect of the racism and sexism levelled against black women.

Misogynoir often plays on sinister stereotypes about Black women, who find themselves hypersexualised or labelled as aggressive and violent.

Former NBC presenter Megyn Kelly has claimed that Harris “slept her way to the top”. And have you ever noticed that distinctive laugh of hers?

Linguistics experts think Harris does this deliberately because her advisers know that she is more likely to be labelled harsh or angry and needs to overcompensate for this with smiles to be seen as electable. We’ve seen similar attacks on Black women for years – think Diane Abbot, Michelle Obama and Meghan Markle. The impact of this will be tough for Harris to bear. We see too many women of colour driven out of politics because of disproportionate levels of abuse. But in an awful way, the continued attacks could garner more support from women.

I think here that the Republicans have made a fundamental miscalculation with the selection of JD Vance as Trump’s vice-president.

His mega-Maga anti-women rhetoric could turn out to be electoral kryptonite as women across America wake up to the fact that they are fundamentally less safe in a right-wing America.

Regardless, the lesson I hope that we take away on election night is that women united are a deadly force against the right.