So is Dana Whittle, 69. Standing in the cold at South Station in Boston last week, she took in a moment of stillness in the middle of an earthshaking personal transition. Lugging two massive bags, she was returning from South Carolina, having packed up her second home, which she was selling amid a divorce after 30 years of marriage.

Ms. Whittle, a part-time nurse, said she found the idea of a female president “extremely” important. She will probably vote for Mrs. Clinton. “I’m an old lady, and I’ve been waiting for it a longer time than most people,” she said, adding, “I burned my bra a long time ago.”

In Denver, at a climbing gym with a view of the Rocky Mountains, climbers scampered up gray walls as hip-hop played in the background. Madeline Schiebel, 26, a former fund-raiser for Planned Parenthood who works at the gym, said most of her friends — “open, forward-thinking people” — were backing Mr. Sanders.

“Maybe my mom’s generation or my grandmother’s generation, they’re like: ‘We’ve been waiting for so long. Things are finally happening. O.K., there is a woman, let’s get her into office,’ ” said Ms. Schiebel, who is undecided. “Whereas we’re more like: ‘Eh, well, it’s going to happen. Let’s make sure it happens the way it’s supposed to happen — in a way that’s good for the country.’ ”

Still, her view is not universal.

“A woman elected president means the world,” wrote Nicole Zhu, 17, a daughter of Chinese immigrants from Princeton, N.J., who bristles at the memory of her parents telling her that politics was for “white men.” Kari Hexem, 34, a New Jersey dentist, wrote how becoming a mother “makes me want to see a woman president, in a different way than I wanted a woman to become president before.”