Highest glass ceiling stays intact

They wore pantsuits to their polling places, emulating the preferred dress of their White House candidate. Some wept with emotion and others remembered their female ancestors as they cast their vote for Democrat Hillary Clinton.

But rather than witness the shattering of the ultimate glass ceiling, women across America watched an historic breakthrough slip away as Clinton failed to become the first woman elected president of the United States.

Republican Donald Trump, who had waged a heated campaign painting the former secretary of state as "crooked" and threatening to put her in jail, swept to surprise victory on an anti-establishment platform.

"I was looking forward to having a woman president. I really was. I can't believe people voted for that terrible man," said Mariana Mejia, 61, sitting at a subdued party at California Democratic Party headquarters in Sacramento.

Some women defied their own political tradition to vote for the first woman presidential nominee of a major US political party. Republican Cassandra Pye, a pioneering African-American political consultant, said she felt the pull of history as she cast her ballot for Clinton.

Several women bemoaned the fact that US women won the right to vote in 1920 and nearly a century later the country has yet to elect a woman president.

"It's been such a hard struggle for women, a very hard struggle," said US Senator Barbara Boxer, who in 1992 made history along with Senator Dianne Feinstein as the first women elected from California to the US Senate. "It's a very emotional moment."

At the Sacramento Democratic party gathering, some women lamented Trump's victory and the long, difficult trek for women to win positions of power.

"I thought by the time I hit 61 it would be different for women and minorities," said Chris Cage, 61, a former journalist and labor organizer. "I see a victory for Trump as a vote against both."