Because Hillary Clinton relentlessly touted her potential become the first female president, the women's vote is especially interesting this year.

The Wall Street Journal has done a good analysis of the women's vote in a front-page news story.

There are some interesting changes: in the past Democrats have won the women's vote, while Republicans have won the married women's vote.

Hillary Clinton became the first Democratic presidential candidate in two decades to win the married women's vote, but women did not, as she must have hoped, carry her over the finish line.

Minority women broke heavily for Clinton (94% of black female voters and 68% of Latino women), but white women went decisively for Trump,  with white women without college degrees giving him an even bigger advantage. Though the gender gap went up a point (12 points, compared to the 11 point gender gap in 2012 that gave Barack Obama his second term), fewer women and more men voted this year.

One of the most interesting questions: how did women weigh Trump's remarks about women's appearance and the infamous "Access Hollywood" tape of the candidate bragging about his conquests?

Hillary Clinton might have wanted to spend her final days on the campaign trail with an upbeat note, outlining her plans for the future, but, as the polls tightened, she was reduced to spending the final days of a long career in politics reminding women that Donald Trump had made disparaging remarks about women's appearance, with former Miss Universe Alicia Machado (Trump called her fat) in tow.

Given the issues at stake, this didn't work as well as the Clinton campaign hoped:

Democrats hoped that emphasizing Mr. Trump’s history of lewd remarks about women and allegations of sexual assault against the candidate would prompt female voters to turn against him. Yet the spread between how men and women voted this week—with 54% of women backing Mrs. Clinton and 42% backing Mr. Trump—was only slightly wider than the gap in 2012 when Mr. Obama and Mitt Romney split female voters 55% and 44%, respectively.

Trump voters across genders signaled they punched their ticket for the candidate despite having misgivings about his treatment of women. Almost three in 10 people who said his treatment of women bothered them voted for him anyway.

“People were willing to overlook things that they didn’t like about him,” said Democratic pollster Anna Greenberg.

Still, Trump's lewd remarks did lose him some female votes–and maybe contributed to Clinton's success with married women:

Married women may have been more likely than other female voters to part ways with Mr. Trump on account of his temperament and demeanor, though their exact motivations are unclear, Ms. Bowman said.

They include women like Kathleen Phillips, a 58-year-old Lafayette, Ind., wife and mother, who voted Republican for president in most elections ever since she cast a ballot for Gerald R. Ford in 1976. She said she was so turned off by Mr. Trump’s crude remarks that she voted for Mrs. Clinton this year.  “She has poise and confidence,” Ms. Phillips said.

On the specific pitch that Clinton deserved women's votes because she would be the first woman president, it appears not to helped significantly, if at all:

Yet in interviews, some women said that electing the first female president wasn’t a reason to back the Mrs. Clinton. They cited misgivings about her use of a private email server while secretary of state, the fact they didn’t trust her or that they disagreed with her policies to expand government aid, such as her plan for free tuition for certain colleges.

“There isn’t a great deal of evidence that either her positions on issues or her candidacy as a woman [moved] the numbers very much,” said Karlyn Bowman, senior fellow at the conservative American Enterprise Institute in Washington.

The United States will undoubtedly elect a female president sometime in the near future, but it is healthy that women voted on issues rather than gender identity.

When we do elect a female president, her gender will likely be the least important factor in her rise (as it was with Margaret Thatcher, the United Kingdom's first female Prime Minister, one of the most consequential figures on the world state in the twentieth century).