Cynthia Martin

Loung Ung, a current human rights activist stated: “Voting is not only our right, it is our power.” She claims that voting should give us power collectively, but women didn’t have the right to vote nearly as long as men did. Many women throughout history have heavily pushed the feminist waves forward, but there was and still is a fight for the equality we have now. Marianne Adelaide Hedwig Dohm was a German writer and feminist, one of the first women to question gender roles and disregard the public judgment of her actions. Hedwig Dohm was ahead of her time, being a woman that understood the bias of gender roles and the way they are social constructs, while actually undetermined biologically. 

Her writing was significant due to being a woman in an especially sexist era where women had the sole role of essentially being housemaids. As a writer, she became influential due to her views in questioning the establishment of gender roles. Hedwig Dohm was part of the intellectual circles in what would become Berlin. She had many published writings on feminist topics that demanded legal, social and economic equality. She grew as a writer, being an integral part of the revival of feminism that occurred right before World War I. She mocked male power, founded a program that advocated educational reform and female studies and consistently disrespected the broken patriarchal social system. Though she had children, she did not let gender roles define her life and she was more than just a stay-at-home mother. She determined how she wanted to live and wanted the same for women. Fortunately, she used her money and attitude to become one of the most iconic and driven feminists that women today can relate to. 

Hedwig Dohm established many feminist ideals that weren’t very pushed for, demanding different forms of equality using her own writing. She was educated and used her intellect to demand further rights for women, a staple in the history of feminism. However, moderate feminists weren’t the most approving due to their own concentration on women’s education rather than all rights and role exclusion. After the death of her husband, she began to write more novels that also dealt with the topic of feminism and the demand for rights. I believe Hedwig Dohm was aware of her efforts being for an extremely important cause, and she likely realized how truly powerful she was both as a woman and regarding the waves of feminism, as she kept on going with the feminist movements she supported and never backed down. She sacrificed her social status as a woman of the bourgeoisie to support herself and other women. She worked hard to achieve such a strong push in feminist movements and refused to allow anybody else tell her she was in any way, shape or form wrong for it. Marianne Adelaide Hedwig Dohm, as aforementioned several times before, was integral to pushing for feminism. She wrote novels, questioned her surroundings and roles, she joined efforts with other foundations that supported women.

My mother, Lidia Orozco, is the first and only woman related to me that has been able to obtain the right to vote. Despite our personal issues, I have always been and will always be proud of her efforts as a woman of color whose first language is not English. I asked her a few questions in Spanish regarding her experience within the context of her life, being the only woman related to me in the United States with a right to vote. I found out that when she was young in Mexico (as she was born there), her mother had always voted and encouraged her and her siblings to not only be involved in politics but to exert their rights to vote and elect proper governors. “In Mexico, when you turn 18 you get your ID and the right to vote. I had no issue with my own political rights as a young woman in Mexico. Soon as I turned 18, I was given my ID and was able to vote easily.”

When she married my father, the only one of his 12 siblings to be born in the United States, she received a residence. That’s when she began to study for citizenship. “It took a huge amount of effort, to learn a completely new language and all of this information to study what was necessary to become a citizen.” With two children to raise and an entirely new language she had to learn to understand, I am very proud of her, as she passed the exam on the first try. “I was able to get a United States ID and since then, I’ve made it a priority to exercise my rights as a citizen (especially to vote) and stay conscious of current politics.” We ended the interview with her personal opinion on the importance of voting. “I believe it is important to vote because it is the way we have to choose our governors according to our interests and needs.”

As a white-passing, US-born citizen, I understand my privileges compared to the women of just the generation before me. I am also very understanding of how I am extremely lucky to have two parents that are legal US citizens. Though I am thankful for my opportunities, I should not be proud of being “born lucky.” This country should not deny others the right to vote when they have established a better life, considering the dangerous state of many other countries. Most of my family has no papers and obviously cannot simply ask for the right to vote, especially not now considering who is president currently. My mother is the first woman in my family that as far as I know has the right to vote, and she is barely the generation before my own. There has been so much progress made thus far, but there is an immensely long way to go.

The right to vote is a powerful right, and it shouldn’t only be granted to those who have papers or those who were born in the country, but also those who come to live in this so-called free country. Immigrants make up hundreds of millions of people in the United States but they most often do not even have the opportunity to obtain the right to vote, establishing an unfair form of government that favors the privileged, but not ALL of the people.

The right to vote for the PEOPLE of this population is important as it gives those without a voice a chance to present the government with their needs and demands. Voting locally, low-communities such as my own have a chance to thrive and improve. State voting can present issues that relate to the unique political and environmental conditions that other states do not experience. Federal voting is extremely important, for an overall comprehension of what the country’s needs are, which is impossible if so many people of the population cannot vouch for because they don’t even have the right to. These rights are important not only to me, but to millions of people.