The ongoing American elections throw up a large voter divide based on gender

We humans have a tendency to not take events at face value but peer deep to glean more valuable meanings. That is why attempts to parse the increasingly incomprehensible US elections as a something more than an opportunistic slugfest are understandable; there simply has to be an intellectually acceptable explanation for the rise and rise of Donald Trump and the equally confounding continuation of Bernie Sanders.

The theory that it can be attributed to the support of a large number of silently suffering men who feel left behind in this era of feminism has faint echoes of Prime Minister Narendra Modi’s campaign focus on ‘achhe din’ for India’s ‘aspirational youth’.

Indeed, if Hillary Clinton is vying for the votes of her gender — by no means an assured support base for her — the male contenders’ bid for the supposed underdogs of their sex is inevitable, though they would both probably be surprised at being perceived thus.

There is, of course, a counterargument that if the intention is to dovetail the goals of both genders, the stances and characteristics of the two male presidential contenders — though their pronouncements are not similar in content — seem hardly best suited for it. But if unaddressed — or redressed — this incipient ‘masculinist’ vote bank could become crucial by the 2020 US presidential elections.