“Leading by listening” was Patti Minter’s mantra throughout her mayoral campaign.

She knocked on 32,000 doors to gain community support by listening to what the Bowling Green, Kentucky community wanted from their next mayor.

“It’s meeting the people where they are, offering them the opportunity to talk with you one-on-one or in a small group, and then seeing where the conversation goes,” Minter said.

She takes pride in being a mother, teacher and advocate, and in separating herself from the “good ol’ boy” politicians around her.

“Patti leans more into the empathy aspect of leadership,” said Veronica Butler, Vice President of Outreach of the Western Kentucky University College Democrats.

Women have long fought for a chance at political power, slowly making strides and reaching milestones.

They hold the most political roles nationwide they ever have, with the 2024 election leaving women to make up about 25% to 30% of the United States Congress, the Senate, the House and statewide executive offices, including governors, according to the Center for American Women and Politics.

But with success often comes sacrifice.

Whether running for president of the United States or mayor of a Kentucky town, accepting gender stereotypes is something female candidates must do to have a shot at winning their campaigns, said Saundra Ardrey, a Democrat political consultant and former chair of the Western Kentucky University Political Science Department.

“To listen, that's what a woman is supposed to do,” Ardrey said. “She's supposed to be a communicator. She's supposed to bring different groups together. And so, you work with that.”

Ardrey said a female politician must be intentional in the presentation of “the three H’s”-- her husband, her hair and her hemline.

Ardrey said women in politics are expected to have a clear handle on family management, keeping their husbands and children “intact.”

“If you can control your husband, and if you control your family, then you might be alright to help society,” Ardrey said about voter view of female candidates.

The validity of 2024 Democratic presidential nominee Kamala Harris’ domesticity was brought into question during her campaign after a three-year-old video clip of Republican vice presidential nominee JD Vance from a Fox News interview in which he called women without children “childless cat ladies.”

“We’re effectively run in this country by Democrats via our corporate oligarchs by a bunch of childless cat ladies who are miserable in their own lives by the choices they’ve made and so they want to make the rest of the country miserable, too,” Vance said.

“If you look at Kamala Harris, Pete Buttigieg, AOC (Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez), the entire future of the Democrats is controlled by people without children,” Vance continued.

Harris is not “childless” -- she has two stepchildren, described in a 2019 memoir as her “endless source of love and pure joy.” They have family dinners. They go on trips. They call her “momala.”

“My heart wouldn’t be whole, nor my life full, without them,” Harris wrote.

Even still, Arkansas Gov. Sarah Huckabee Sanders remarked on the validity of Harris’ motherhood in a September town hall.

After sharing an anecdote about her children reinforcing her humility, Sanders said Harris “doesn’t have anything keeping her humble,” seemingly a jab at Harris not having biological children.

“This is not the 1950s anymore,” Harris said in response on the podcast “Call Her Daddy” weeks later. “Families come in all kinds of forms.”

“The most important thing I have to say to you today is that hair matters,” Hillary Clinton, the 2016 Democratic presidential nominee, said at Yale’s class of 2001 commencement. “Pay attention to your hair, because everyone else will.”

Clinton’s hair has been a topic long-discussed over her political career -- from a 1992 TV interview where she donned a black headband atop her blonde bangs and medium-length locks to her appearance at the 2024 Democratic National Convention with a waved, grayed, side-parted bob.

In 1994, TIME published an article describing and showing images of how Clinton’s hair had changed across 14 months, asking when she would “settle on a hairstyle.”

One reader responded, “Tsk, tsk, TIME. I am more interested in what is in Hillary Clinton’s head than in what is on it. Shouldn’t you be too?”

“If I want to knock a story off the front page, I just change my hairstyle,” Clinton joked in 1995.

But Ardrey said it’s not only about hair, it’s about the perception of a woman’s overall physical appearance.

“Women cannot be too sexy, because we don't want to intimidate or insult women who may not be as beautiful, so we want to make sure you're nice and attractive and you're acceptable, but you're not too pretty, not too sexy,” Ardrey said.

“Your clothes have to be just right,” Ardrey said.

Candidates must balance a fine line between being too feminine or too masculine. They can only show so much cleavage, can only wear so much jewelry.

They must fit in, she said, making sure not to be “too” anything. They must be “your average woman,” one that’s dynamic, but not intimidating to men or to other women.

Ardrey said most female candidates like Harris and Clinton wear pantsuits. Similarly, Minter tends to wear a-lined dresses hitting at the knees with matching jackets.

Clinton wrote in a 2017 memoir her ensembles were an “anti-distraction technique.” If what she wore wasn’t much to report on, then maybe people would focus on what she was saying.

“I also thought it would be good to do what male politicians do and wear more or less the same thing every day,” Clinton wrote.

And it’s not just about the style. Color also has an impact.

Ardrey said women tend to wear blue -- women who often hold Democratic policies.

Both Kamala and Clinton wore purple in their presidential election concession speeches, which both Elle and Vogue analyzed as nods to bipartisanship.

“Blending Democratic blue and Republican red Harris' outfit choice is a symbolic nod to the unity she fought for,” the November Elle article states.

Alliterated stereotypes regarding looks and families aren’t the only thing women in politics must accept. Even their policies must reflect what the ideal American woman should value, which Ardrey calls the “ethics of care.”

“We focus on health care issues,” Ardrey said. “We focus on children and the family. We focus on the infrastructure, crime. We focus on climate control, ending violence.”

When Minter was asked by the College Heights Herald what the biggest issue facing Bowling Green today was, she said affordable housing. When her opponent, incumbent Bowling Green Mayor Todd Alcott, was asked the same question, he said parking.

Ardrey said she thinks examples of policy differences like that result from the way men and women are socialized differently. While female politicians are often on the people side of the argument, male politicians tend to be linked to the more capitalistic, corporate side, she said.

“He (Alcott) doesn’t have to worry about housing for all,” Ardrey said. “Why would you (he) worry about that? It’s not his base.”

Ardrey said women are needed in politics due to the differences they have in policy from the men who have always held power.

With a loss from both Harris and Minter, Ardrey expressed this won’t yet change.

“I think this path that we're on has consequences for who runs for office, who gets into office, and as a consequence, the policies that are passed,” Ardrey said.

Both Minter and Harris lost their campaigns to male opponents.

“Sometimes, it’s just a little bit harder to mark in that bubble for the lady in the blue suit,” Minter said.

President-elect Donald Trump, a convicted felon and accused sexual assaulter who commented on grabbing women by their vaginas, will be America’s leader once again.

“He's (Trump) made it okay to hate, and now it's just acceptable,” Ardrey said. “Racism and sexism and misogyny. You don't even have to hide it anymore.”

Minter said once upon a time, men degraded women due to feeling threatened by them. Now, with no consequences, they’re doing it out of empowerment.

“We are well beyond toxic masculinity,” she said. “We are into misogyny and patriarchy levels at an overt level. “That's the difference. It’s not a whisper campaign anymore.”

Minter said male politicians can say whatever they want to, and people still applaud them.

“It's a very, very discouraging time, but doesn't mean the work's not worth doing,” Minter said.

With men left in charge again, Americans may be left wondering what comes next for women in the political scene.

“I don’t know what the answers are,” Ardrey said. “I am dumbfounded.”

She said people like her -- those who have dedicated their lives to fight for change -- are tired of putting so much in and not seeing lasting effects.

Ardrey said it’s time to pass the torch to the younger generations.

“I'm glad that most social movements are run by young people because you are still energetic, you're still hopeful, and you still have all this energy,” Ardrey said.

Butler said she thinks the answer is to support each other and not give up on the attempt to enact changes.

“There is not a single card game in the world where you're stuck with the hand that you're dealt,” Butler said. “You discard, you draw and you keep playing.”

She said since the election ended, she has witnessed retaliation and passion from women locally and nationally, women who have not given up on the fight.

“Everybody’s asking that question, ‘Where do we go from here?’ and I think that’s what we’re trying to tackle,” Butler said. “But now, we have each other.”