Psst. Don’t tell anyone, but we might get a female president.

This time we’re quiet — from superstition, maybe, or from knowing how hope can plant a land mine in your heart.

Kamala Harris is keeping it quiet, too, campaigning in unisex Converse sneakers rather than in heels. When she accepted the nomination, she didn’t mention her gender at all. She’s running as a child of the middle class, as a prosecutor, as our best hope of defeating Donald Trump. She’s not running to become the first female president of the United States.

I think she’s right not to. We shouldn’t vote for her because she’s a woman. We should vote for her because, in stark contrast to her opponent, she’s a capable, compassionate public servant trying to make America a better place.

But if she wins and this country happens to elect a woman to its highest office? That, too, would make America a better place.

Not, I hasten to say, because women have some essential qualities that men lack. Or because a female leader will necessarily work to improve the lives of women; Margaret Thatcher put that notion to rest in the 1980s. When the BBC’s “Woman’s Hour” asked the British prime minister about providing child care to working women, Thatcher said, if “mothers want to keep their hand in when their children are small, they should perhaps do a little part-time work with the help of an aunt or a granny.” Sound familiar?

Nevertheless, Thatcher did do something undeniably good for British women and girls: She made them perceive themselves differently. Feminist author Natasha Walter, no fan of Tory politics, has written that, “Girls who grew up when she was running the country were able to imagine leadership as a female quality in a way that girls today struggle to do.”

Research bears out this link, this daisy chain of role modeling. More women leaders means more women see themselves as potential leaders, more girls dial up their ambitions and more women run for office. One study found that the election of a female governor or U.S. senator increased the number of female legislative candidates in subsequent elections in that state as well as neighboring states, and its authors concluded “that women in major offices are crucial for women’s representation.”

You can see the Catch-22 embedded in that, can’t you?

If it matters whether women have other role models in the professions to which they might aspire — and study after study shows it does — then women have had an upward climb through the sucking mud even after the dismantling of most of the legal and structural barriers to full female participation in professional and political life.

And how long ago was that? Since the pill? Since the Civil Rights Acts? Since Title IX?

Compared with millennia of men in charge — as enshrined in and enforced by the three major monotheistic religions — the century that American women have had the right to vote is nothing.

Sometimes I think, after 248 years of the United States and 45 men as president, what’s taking so long? And then I remember, it’s been essentially 12 minutes since women could take out our own damn credit cards.

The fact that we’re this close — and with a woman of color, no less, and all the extra sucking mud that involves — is miraculous.

When Harris was born, 60 years ago this month, women could not serve on a jury in all 50 states. They had to have a male relative sign a business loan. They had no legal recourse against sexual harassment or marital rape. There was no no-fault divorce. They could get the pill, but only if they were married. They could not get a legal abortion unless their lives were in danger, and they could be fired for getting pregnant. They could not be admitted to Harvard College or the U.S. Military Academy or join their local Rotary, Kiwanis or Lions Club. Among the Fortune 500 companies, there was not a single female CEO.

To get to the point where she might become the first female U.S. president, Harris first had to become the first female district attorney of San Francisco, the first female attorney general of California and the first female vice president of the United States.

After that win, she did talk about making history. “While I may be the first woman in this office,” she said, “I won’t be the last. Because every little girl watching tonight sees that this is a country of possibilities.”

My own girl was 15 then; she’s now about to vote in her first presidential election. This time, I won’t buy a special outfit. But if Harris wins, I might get us each a pair of Converse sneakers. I like how you can make great strides in them without making much noise.