As Bea Sousa went to cast her vote early at Muncie’s courthouse a couple weeks ago, the historic symbolism of the moment crept up on her unawares. She paused to take it in.

“I found myself just standing there for a moment, thinking, ‘Wow. This is great,’” says Sousa, 75, the former spokesperson for the League of Women Voters of Muncie-Delaware County, formed from the American movement for womens’ suffrage. “I realised for a long time that I would be voting for a woman for president but I didn’t even think about it going into the election room. It lasted only 10 seconds or so. I thought about the women suffragists who had been force fed, who had done amazing things, who had stood up to such abuse. Who put off the fight for women’s votes during the civil war. It’s been a long, long journey, And I thought, ‘This is such a vindication for them.’”

America may be on the brink of electing its first female president. She is in a contest with a man who has been accused of sexual assault in particular and misogyny in general. The gender gap looks likely to be greater than in any previous election. Some women are turning Donald Trump’s hot mic words against him and wearing “Pussy grabs back” T-shirts and changing their Twitter profiles to include the term “Nasty Woman”; after Nate Silver’s FiveThirtyEight website reported a gender split in polling and produced maps showing how Trump would win if only men could vote, Trump supporters started a hashtag on Twitter #repealthe19th, calling for the repeal of the 19th amendment, which delivered suffrage for women.

In short, American gender politics has reached a raw and deeply polarised point that this election is both reflecting and accentuating. “In some ways Obama’s presidency and candidacy brought out more of the racial prejudice that might have been suppressed,” says Linda Hanson, the current spokesperson for the LWV in Muncie-Delaware County, who readers suggested we speak to. “And I think we’re seeing the prejudices in the same way with Hillary. I think her presence is exacerbating the misogyny and drawing it out.”

Facebook Twitter Pinterest Women in Walnut Street in downtown Muncie. Photograph: David Levene/The Guardian

Since Trump's boasts of sexually assaulting women, the importance of Hillary being a woman speaks to me more

But while African Americans, among others, overwhelmingly rallied around Obama’s candidacy (delivering him 96% of the black vote) and celebrated the prospect of the first black president, Clinton’s campaign has produced more ambivalence and less excitement among women (among whom she enjoys 50% of the vote ).

In Muncie, women are divided on Clinton. The most obvious difference is partisan. Like other Trump voters, women who are voting Republican can’t bear her. At last week’s meeting of the Citizens of Delaware County for Good Government (CDCGG), a conservative campaigning group where half of those in attendance were women, one woman asked: “What has she ever done for women?” Another replied: “Look at the kind of women who are standing behind her.”

Responses to Trump’s statements also broadly divide on partisan lines.“They said he was sexist because he called that beauty queen who’d put on weight Miss Piggy,” said one of the women at CDCGG. “But women say that kind of thing about women all the time.”

When it comes to Trump’s assertion that he “grabs women by the pussy,” Jamie Walsh, who is in her early 30s and whose only previous presidential vote was for Obama in 2008, said: “It does bother me but personally I’m not easily offended. I’ve heard worse, I’ve seen worse, I’ve experienced worse – and all of a sudden these people haven’t heard all these things before. You’re kidding me. I think the outrage is overplayed for votes.”

Cathy Day, 48, an English professor at Ball State University who originally backed Bernie Sanders, says: “Since Trump has started boasting about sexually assaulting women the importance of her being a woman has definitely started to speak to me more.”

But like many women here who originally voted for Sanders, Clinton still does not appeal to Day, who displays a sign for every other Democratic candidate in her front yard but the presidential nominee, even if she will vote for her. “As a woman it was kind of hard for me to hear some of the anti-Hillary stuff when I was campaigning for Sanders because I think a lot of it came from a place of misogyny,” she says. “And sometimes it was women saying it. But I identify as a working-class woman. My class identity is very important to me and her candidacy didn’t really speak to me on that level.”

Morgan Aprill, 23, of the Progressive Student Alliance, backed Sanders and is now voting for the Green candidate, Jill Stein. “I think it’s extremely important that there could be a female president,” she says. “It’ll be good for us too and it’s about time. Of course it’s emblematic. I just wish it was a different woman. I’m voting for another female candidate.”

Sousa, who says she is not a “rabid Hillary fan” herself, believes a higher bar is being set for Clinton than her male counterparts of the past. “I’ve met a lot of women who detest her intensely,” she says. “I can’t take credit for this statement but I heard someone say: ‘We’ve gotten used to voting for males we don’t like. We’ve held our nose and we’ve voted for them for whatever reason. But we aren’t used to doing that with a woman.’ Our culture holds women to a higher standard.

“I always thought that was an excuse not to treat women equally. It hasn’t been that long since women got the vote … not even a century yet. So you couldn’t find the perfect woman to run for president any more than you could find the perfect African American to be the first African-American president.”

Facebook Twitter Pinterest Runners on the Greenway park development that follows the route of the White River through Muncie Photograph: David Levene/The Guardian

Views are also shaded quite heavily by race. Sanders won Delaware County, where Muncie resides, but Clinton won handily in Whitely, the black part of town on the east side. “I’m 33 years old,” says Monique Armstrong, the executive director of Motivate Our Minds which is based in Whitely and offers after-school and recreational activities to children and teens.

“I remember when Hillary was first lady. I’m married but I have not changed my name [as Clinton didn’t initially in her career]. I’m a leader in an organisation. I’ve chosen to dedicate my professional life to improving the lives of children. So when I think about the things they don’t like about her as a candidate they are probably the same things they don’t like about me.”

Finally, there seems to be a generational divide. For younger women, who are far more likely to vote for Clinton than older women, the historical relevance of her possible election may not resonate so much.

“I think it’s very hard for women who are in their 20s or 30s to understand what women in their 60s and 70s went through when they were coming up that age,” explains Sousa, who several readers suggested we spoke to. “There’s a lot of women of my age who felt themselves passed over because they were female or were verbally harassed just in thoughtless ways rather than mean ways who do value what she has come through. Women who know that they can get into law school and medical school have a whole different perspective on our history as women.”

Earlier in the campaign season, the local LWV proposed a forum at which candidates from all the parties could explain their policies as it related to women, as they have often done in the past. The Republicans refused to participate.

“If you look at the things we raise as being of concern to our members they are consistent,” says Hanson. “They’ve been there for decades. They are pretty mainstream. But now those positions have been identified by some on the far right as being too far left. So the Republican party chair said the candidates didn’t have to participate in our forum and that meant the Democrats couldn’t either. So it didn’t happen.”

Most women I’ve spoken to in Muncie think the prospects for gender equality are improving both here and beyond, but there is still significant work to do. To that extent it is fairly typical of America.

According to a recent poll, women think more progress has been made in overcoming sexism than racism in the past 20 years by a ratio of almost two to one. Roughly three-quarters of women think there’s some or a lot of sexual harassment in the workplace and believe women doing similar work are getting paid less than men. More than half of Americans consider Clinton a role model; less than half think she is judged more harshly.

Facebook Twitter Pinterest The Fickle Peach on E Charles Street on the corner of Walnut Street, downtown Muncie Photograph: David Levene/The Guardian

Muncie elected its first female mayor, Sharon McShurley, in 2008. McShurley served until 2012, and Hanson says women now occupy some important positions guiding the economic and cultural regeneration of the town. But there is still a long way to go. Hanson says McShurley’s “self-presentation was criticised in the same ways that Hillary Clinton’s was … they would still talk about the way she spoke, the way she dressed, it was really sexist”.

A counsellor at the local women’s shelter, who works with first offenders in spousal abuse, told Sousa that many of the men he sees haven’t seen women treated with respect and that their experience is that’s the way men treat women. “A lot has changed,” says Sousa, “but the underbelly of interpersonal relationships hasn’t.”

That pause for reflection in the ballot box was important, she says, but she doesn’t want to fetishise it. “It was a moment. But I don’t want to make too big a deal out of it. It should just be something that happens. It’s too bad it’s taken so long. But I hope her being a woman doesn’t become the main thing about her as she goes forward. That it’s about what she’s able to do. Once we get past this we can try and move on and take care of the problems this country has because we certainly have a lot of them.”