call it pink and blue america. to the many divides this ugly presidential campaign has exposed, add the chasm over the treatment of women, the plight of men and the proper roles of each. this was an election that showed how much we still talk past one another when we talk about gender. it made plain profound gaps in how men and women perceive one another<u+2019>s lives and prerogatives. this was an election in which the grievances of white men <u+2014> their economic upheaval, their cultural displacement <u+2014> exploded. the fallout included toxic paroxysms of racism, islamophobia, anti-semitism and sexism. misogyny, it appears, thrives in corners of the united states. donald j. trump <u+2019>s hyper-masculinity <u+2014> the sexual swagger, the belittling of his opponents, his need to dominate <u+2014> appealed to some men who believed he could restore them to their rightful place. yet men at trump rallies also spoke of their faith that mr. trump, whose business acumen they revered, would bring an outsider<u+2019>s willingness to take on the elites who put them down. the campaign became a battle of two caricatures: male chauvinist pig against scheming, dishonest woman. it exposed parallel universes. in one, women flooded social media with their memories of sexual assault after mr. trump was caught on tape boasting about forcing himself on women. in another, men dismissed the tape as locker room talk or were surprised at how many women told them such harassment was commonplace. this is an intimate divide. the boundaries of pink and blue america are fluid, and they come up within households and communities. the gender chasm is bound up with class and confounds easy categorization. there are men who embrace violent misogyny and men who deplore it, women who shrugged off the <u+201c>access hollywood<u+201d> tape and hate hillary clinton with as much fervor as any man. a majority of white women voted for mr. trump, exit polls by edison research suggest. while polling does not reach into individual marriages, the results suggest a marital gap <u+2014> 58 percent of married men voted for mr. trump compared with 47 percent of married women, according to exit polls. a yougov poll published on oct. 9 offered a glimpse into what the veteran pollster celinda lake calls the <u+201c>sure, honey<u+201d> factor: forty-four percent of married women said they planned to vote for mrs. clinton; 33 percent of married men said they thought their spouse would vote for her. as in politics, so in the workplace. at work, women have made substantial inroads and dominate the fastest-growing (and lower paid) segments of the economy, the <u+201c>pink collar<u+201d> industries such as health and education. more than a fifth of american men between 20 and 65 had no paid work last year. but men consistently underestimate the barriers that women confront. in a study of more than 34,000 employees at 132 companies, 54 percent of men thought that the best opportunities would go to the most deserving employees regardless of gender; just 44 percent of women believed that. the survey, conducted by lean in and mckinsey and company and released in late september, found that a third of women thought their gender was a disadvantage in getting a raise or promotion. on campus, young men and women are facing off over what is assault and what is a sexual pass gone awry. young men frequently protest that they are denied due process in campus hearings of sexual assault; young women charge that their attackers too often go unpunished. even reading habits diverge: women read mysteries and true crime; men read science fiction and history, according to peter hildick-smith, the president of codex group, which surveys reading patterns. there has been much talk of healing in this fervid season. the racism that president obama<u+2019>s election forced to the surface emboldened the so-called alt-right, but also forced many white americans to acknowledge lasting inequities. that may well be the case during the tenure of president trump: an eruption of sexism and an inability to deny its virulence. <u+201c>some men have this feeling that women are coming <u+2014> in education, on polls, on social media, they have a voice,<u+201d> said marianne cooper, a sociologist at stanford<u+2019>s clayman institute for gender research. <u+201c>this upends a long history of women knowing their place.<u+201d> katy cockrell, 25, backed senator bernie sanders of vermont, but found herself weeping as she cast a vote for mrs. clinton and thought of her grandmothers. <u+201c>they lived in this <u+2018>mad men<u+2019> era, and i thought about how much i admired them as they fought the sexism they<u+2019>d experienced,<u+201d> she said. now, she added of mr. trump, <u+201c>the tough part for me and women of all ages is that we are going to look at him every day and be reminded of every time we<u+2019>ve faced sexism in our own lives.<u+201d> ron ritz, who attended a trump rally in ambridge, pa., last month, saw in mrs. clinton a symbol of all that<u+2019>s gone wrong in his world. steel and energy companies once dotted the area; now they are gone. <u+201c>we had industries that shut down,<u+201d> mr. ritz, 69, said. <u+201c>people have no jobs, things are bad. and she turns around and tells them they<u+2019>re deplorable. that<u+2019>s like kicking a dog that<u+2019>s tied.<u+201d> some research has found a backlash when men feel they are losing their status. iris bohnet, the director of the women and public policy program at harvard kennedy school, is a behavioral economist who believes in the principle of <u+201c>nudging<u+201d> people toward social norms. that typically means telling people, for example, that their friends have voted in order to prompt them to vote, too. to test if she could induce diversity in hiring, ms. bohnet told research volunteers that the group before them had hired a predominantly female team. men balked and chose to hire more men than women, she found. so what comes next, now that mr. trump has defied political convention and political correctness? some of the men who feel pushed aside are looking to him to rebalance the scales they feel have tipped against them. many women are wondering whether words and deeds that a half-century of feminism tried to put off limits will now be acceptable. the pink and blue divide may prove as deep, fractious and mutually incomprehensible as the red and blue. a version of this news analysis appears in print on november 10, 2016, on page p8 of the new york edition with the headline: ugly campaign descended into a battle of two caricatures. order reprints | today's paper | subscribe
vote highlighted a gender gap, with both sides feeling they<u+2019>ve lost ground
susan chira