Middle-aged and older women have often found their efforts dismissed and derided. Hillary Clinton has faced repeated demands that she exit public life, something men who failed to win a presidential election such as Al Gore, John F. Kerry, John McCain and Mitt Romney did not contend with to the same degree. Elizabeth Warren’s mishandling of her claims of Native American ancestry continue to receive an incredible amount of attention, while her strong, decades-long advocacy of consumer financial issues, of the sort that were at the heart of the Great Recession and our age of inequality, are somehow deemed secondary. When it comes to Democratic candidates who lost their elections in 2018, Beto O’Rourke, 46, is described as presidential material, while Stacey Abrams, 45, who frankly came a lot closer to winning her race, for governor in Georgia, seems all but forgotten. How does that work again?

Yet a study in the journal Democracy pointed out that women of a certain age played a pivotal role in the resistance to Trump, pouring their energies into volunteer roles on political campaigns, writing postcards, knocking on doors and making calls. These foot soldiers, the article noted, are typically “women from mid-life to early retirement years.” But thanks to the way bias works, they remain underrepresented when it comes to public attention. Yes, these younger women get derided more than men — as Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez, 29, pointed out on Twitter earlier this week, “Double standards are Paul Ryan being elected at 28 and immediately being given the benefit of his ill-considered policies considered genius; and me winning a primary at 28 to immediately be treated with suspicion & scrutinized, down to my clothing, of being a fraud” — but they are also heralded as the future.