I’ve lived in the US for 30 years – but as a Brit, I wouldn’t move here now ...Middle East

A British woman who has lived in the United States for three decades has said the clampdown on women’s rights and freedoms mean she would not move there today.

Anne Gardner, 60, was in her mid-twenties when she moved from London to the US with her now-husband. 

Now, sitting at her home in Connecticut, north-west of New York, Gardner says that although the state she calls home has primarily voted Democrat since 1992, since the re-election of US President Donald Trump last November she feels things have taken a turn for the worse, with freedoms she once took for granted shrinking.

“I can’t say that if I were younger, especially as a woman, I would move here now given the current political climate,” Gardner, a dual national US-UK, tells The i Paper. “I try to blot out what is said and done about women, but it’s impossible for it not to affect your daily life.”

Gardner says while she herself has not experienced any direct misogynistic remarks, she believes that for young women, particularly those in the southern states, it must be more apparent.

“I always think of my 29-year-old daughter,” Gardner says. “She lives in Massachusetts [a Democratic state] , so I’m not overly concerned about her, but it’s the ‘what ifs’ that get me. Like what if she were to move south and need an abortion?

“Thankfully she’s never been in that situation but it would be more than heart-wrenching. I live in a bubble up here, but I could never live down south – it feels as if choices get stripped away from women.”

In 2022, the US Supreme Court struck down Roe v Wade, the constitutional guarantee to an abortion, after Trump packed it with conservative, anti-abortion judges. In June the Trump administration revoked federal guidance to hospitals for providing emergency abortions.

The President was also found liable in 2023 for sexually abusing a writer, and has come under public scrutiny over his former friendship with the convicted paedophile and sex trafficker Jeffrey Epstein.

Trump and has a long history of using insulting, lewd and misogynistic language about women, and before the 2016 presidential election was exposed telling an associate that “when you’re a star, they let you do it. You can do anything. … Grab ’em by the pussy”.

For Gardner, Trump telling a female reporter to be “quiet, piggy” last month was the final straw.

“What shocks me the most isn’t that he said it, but that it’s acceptable. I’ve heard people say in passing that that is just how he talks, as though it’s an excuse,” says Gardner.

She adds that the Covid-19 pandemic changed her area, with people from nearby New York City moving there for more space and a slower pace of life.

“I suddenly saw a lot of Trump flags in the neighbourhood and there’s even somewhat of a divide here now. You can feel it in the air.”

Around 41 per cent of Connecticut’s residents voted for Trump during the 2024 election – the highest amount a Republican has obtained since 2004 when George Bush Jr was voted in, according to online data archive The American Presidency Project.

Gardner says the divide is so apparent that she has distanced herself from Republican friends who voted for Trump the second time around. Previously Republicans and Democrats could have civil conversations around politics, she says.

However, it is not all doom and gloom, she adds, pointing out that the US has offered her far more work opportunities than the UK ever could in spite of everything.

Her feelings are echoed by Sarah White, 29, who moved from Wakefield in West Yorkshire who moved to Katy, Texas when she was 15. Now a dual national living in Houston, which has become more democratic leaning over the last decade, she works as a production manager for her father’s company.

She feels the US offers more freedom to shape a career regardless of gender, and that the atmosphere is not as stagnant as in the UK.

She says there has been no difference to her daily life since Trump returned to the presidency in January.

“I think social media creates a lot of conflict and a lot more drama than necessary,” she says.

“I can’t say my life has changed in the slightest. I’m just happy to go about my daily routine.”

But for Gardner back in Connecticut, things look bleak.

“ Misogyny is out there.”

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