WINTERSET, Iowa — Almost exactly three years ago, Leila Schlenker marveled at the crowds at the Women’s March in Des Moines, which drew more than 26,000 people to the grounds of the state capitol and reminded her of the large social protests of the 1960s.

Her daughter, now a mother herself, used to roll her eyes when her mom would talk about the importance of fighting for issues like abortion rights and equal pay. But Ms. Schlenker has seen how the current political moment has convinced her daughter that her rights could be taken away, and that sexism remains a force in both of their lives. And she’s watched in horror as the Trump administration has worked to roll back funding for clinics specializing in reproductive health care, the field she worked in for more than a quarter century.

Yet, as she sat in the front row of a crowded banquet hall on Monday morning, waiting for Pete Buttigieg, the former mayor of South Bend, Ind., to take the stage, Ms. Schlenker, 66, made clear that there was at least one area of her life where gender was not a determining factor.

“I would love to see a woman in office,” she said. “But I still like Pete.”

In the final weeks before the Iowa caucuses, the two leading female candidates remaining in the Democratic primary are embracing their gender as an asset, decisively pushing back against concerns that a woman can’t be elected president. Those sensitive conversations burst into public view this past week at the Democratic debate, in a nationally televised discussion about sexism and experience between Senators Elizabeth Warren of Massachusetts and Bernie Sanders of Vermont.