Now that Elizabeth Warren, Tulsi Gabbard, Kirsten Gillibrand, and Kamala Harris have announced their intent to run for president — and American women are expressing excitement over multiple female candidates on the ballot — we can expect a familiar refrain to reemerge from the shadows of 2016: Caring about gender in an election is sexist.

How could feminists, who claim to want equality between the sexes, admit to wanting to vote for a woman?

The short answer is: Because political representation is important. Despite historic gains in the midterms, women still hold less than 25 percent of seats in Congress and less than 30 percent of those in statewide elective executive offices and state legislatures are women. Those aren’t just numbers — as the government decides if women will be able to access abortion without jumping through hoops, or what kind of support single moms will get, less than a third of the people at the table will be women.

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What’s more biased: Wanting a female president, or expecting half the population to live in a country of laws crafted by men?

The truth is that a vote for a man is far more tainted by bias — generations of patriarchy, to be exact — than any vote for a female leader. We live in a country where for over 200 years, men have been elected to the presidency because they were men. Still, a vote for men is depicted as a politically neutral act, whereas a vote for a woman, that’s influenced by the desire to push back against years of inequality, is painted as silly or shallow.

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Since there’s no winning cultural approval, women might as well do and say whatever they want. For me, that means being unequivocally thrilled about voting for a woman. That doesn’t mean any woman will do (Gabbard, I’m looking at you), but it does mean gender matters to me. It matters to a lot of us — and it should.

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