Women’s rights have come a long way, she said, recalling the days when she worked in the newspaper business selling advertising and was paid far less than her male colleagues. “They earned commission, and I didn’t,” she said. “And I was always called ‘Mrs. John VandenHeede.’ I didn’t even have a name.”

“She was the best salesman in the bunch, too,” said her husband, Mr. VandenHeede.

Other women sharply questioned the notion of protesting a president whose administration had begun only the day before. “It’s kind of offensive,” said Linda Hine, 56, an accounting manager who voted for Mr. Trump. “People are just criticizing because they didn’t get their way. All it did was force another reason for people to be divided.”

Ms. Hine interpreted Mr. Trump’s inaugural speech on Friday as a generous, uplifting call to bring people together, contradicting the belief of others that it had painted an overly dark and gloomy picture of the country. “It was about unity,” she said.

Her friend Kim Redman, 48, said that as opponents of abortion, they would not have felt welcome at the march anyway, echoing a frequent complaint that only women who favor abortion rights were encouraged to attend. If women would just give Mr. Trump a chance, he might not be as bad as they expect, she said.

“He’s our president no matter what,” she said.

Why do women need a march at all, some people asked, when they have made so many gains in the past few decades? “Women have equal opportunities in the workplace now. We’ve got minorities in jobs. The glass ceilings have opened up all across the nation,” said Tammy Chesney, 53, a carpenter, adding that she had never experienced discrimination on the job.

She shrugged off Mr. Trump’s comments that he had grabbed women’s genitals without asking permission. “It wasn’t nice,” she said. “But he apologized, and it was in the past. It was blown all out of proportion.”