Feminism lost. Now what?

To many inside and outside the feminist movement, the Clinton campaign message missed the mark.

“White working-class women saw Hillary Clinton as another privileged white woman wanting to break the glass ceiling,” said Joan C. Williams, professor at University of California Hastings College of the Law. “That metaphor makes sense if your central goal is to gain access to jobs that privileged men have. Hillary’s feminism was not about them.”

Feminism, which at its heart should mean opportunities for women in every sphere, has also come to be seen as a proxy for liberalism, alienating conservatives.

S. E. Cupp, a columnist for The Daily News in New York and a conservative who did not vote for Mr. Trump, said: “There’s a condescension that comes across from some in the women’s movement. There’s this idea that if you’re not liberal, you’re a traitor to your gender. Is our message alienating entire groups of people, including women?”

She raised the provocative possibility that many women believed that Mr. Trump would keep the country safe in part because of his paternalistic, alpha male persona — and that was an implicit rejection of feminism’s attempts to redefine gender roles.