Sometimes it’s hard to be a woman. Other times, the nice men running for president pat you on the head and tell you that one day you might get to play second fiddle to their greatness.

In a time of extreme wokeness, a bunch of men, mostly white men, populate the top tier of Democratic presidential candidates, and all of them are embarrassed about it.

The men are aware that, like leopard print paired with stripes, they’re out this season — so they’re promising to accessorize with the fairer sex.

Asked at the “She the People” forum in Houston whether he will choose a woman to share his ticket, Cory Booker said, “I will have a woman running mate. To me, it’s really clear that we do that.”

Of course, at an event called “She the People,” it would be hard to resist the siren song of pandering. But it wasn’t the first time Booker had made the pledge. He previously said Democrats would “make history” and declared, “There will be a woman on the ticket. I don’t know if it’s in the vice president’s position or in the president’s position.”

Booker isn’t alone. Pete Buttigieg told Ellen DeGeneres he would consider a female VP ­because it’s important “to have gender diversity and gender balance.”

Even the lower-tier candidates are getting in on the sweet woman-pandering action. Eric Swalwell, previously mostly known for threatening to use nuclear weapons on gun owners, tweeted “SPOILER ALERT: I’m a white man. I know where I can’t speak to someone else’s experience.” He pledged to “pass the mic” and “ask a woman to serve as VP.”

Spoiler alert: Playing the male savior to women is lame.

When Joe Biden was still considering entering the race, he floated Stacy Abrams as his possible VP. Her answer was thanks, but no thanks.

That’s the right response, but at least Abrams got name-checked. Beto O’Rourke recently said: “It would be very difficult not to select a woman with so many extraordinary women who are running right now.”

Kamala Harris, Elizabeth Warren, Tulsi Gabbard, Amy Klobuchar, Kirsten Gillibrand, you’re all so extraordinary — yet completely interchangeable.

Bernie Sanders, meanwhile, didn’t just limit his choice to gender. He would like to order up specifically a younger woman, thank you. “I think we would look for somebody who is maybe not of the same gender that I am, and maybe somebody who might be a couple of years younger than me,” he said in February.

Yes, I’m a male candidate in a sea of male candidates, the men admit. But, if you nominate me, I promise to stand next to a woman on a stage at some point.

If these men cared as deeply as they pretend to about seeing women in leadership positions, they’d step aside and offer themselves as the VP candidates to the women running for president.

The rhetoric also reeks of desperation. Someone alluding to a VP candidate this early doesn’t have a strong enough candidacy to stand on his own.

It’s a continuing problem among Democrats to minimize women to a vote-getting gimmick and then imagine the votes of women are owed to them through the power of this tokenism.

It’s bad for women to be treated this way, and it’s not good for Democrats, either. They’ve come to expect the “women’s vote,” and then are stunned when they don’t get it.

In Hillary Clinton’s complaints in the aftermath of the 2016 election, sexism played a prominent role. Her voters, she said, were criticized for voting for “the woman.” At the same time, she lashed out at women who didn’t vote for her and said they were controlled by the men in their lives.

In January, The New York Times ran a story about liberals worried that a woman couldn’t beat Trump. No one on the left seems to have a problem with this formulation. Could a woman beat Trump? Shouldn’t the answer be: “Depends on the woman”?

The offensiveness of promising a gender-split ticket would be obvious if the female candidates were asked if they’d promise to pick a male for VP.

What none of these male candidates are brave enough to say is that the voters should nominate the best person who will pick the best running mate and generally accept that sometimes that person will be a woman and sometimes it will be a man.

Women make up more than 50% of the population. We aren’t some special-interest group with idiosyncratic issues to be ­addressed. Yet the continued coddling from Democrats conflicts with their “women are powerful” messaging. Women can do anything, including run for president. Someone should let the male Democrats know women don’t need their assistance.

Twitter: @Karol