I spent last semester abroad in Chile, and I remember quite distinctly a day in my Chilean culture class, when our professor pointed out that poet Gabriela Mistral, the first of the two Chileans to win the Nobel Prize for literature, was unable to vote in her country’s elections when she received the award. In 1945 she became the first Latin American to win a Nobel Prize for literature, and women did not gain suffrage in Chile until four years later in 1949. Obviously, I was not ignorant to the centuries of female subjugation including a lack of suffrage, but this irony was too great not to puzzle over. Mistral had been deemed one of the most influential writers of the world; she had held professorships at Columbia and Middlebury, worked for the League of Nations and traveled extensively. And she could not vote.

For some odd reason, thinking of female suffrage now always reminds me of Mary Poppins. The looney mother, Mrs. Banks, a suffragette, is always heading out to some rally, preparing sashes and even talks about how she and her group of women are going to chain themselves up for the movement. Her big scene in the movie is when she sings “Sister Suffragette” and prances around the hall spouting her feminist ideals. Beautiful and invested, she could have been a great image of female empowerment. And yet, when her husband is home she caters to his every whim, accepts his angry decrees and submits humbly to him. She is even portrayed as a little goofy and out of sorts, unable to keep track of her children, and her dedication to her cause comes off as almost superficial. Certainly, as a kid, I never read into Mrs. Banks at all, I was far more preoccupied with the implied romance between Mary and Bert, but looking back, the movie is an interesting commentary on the feminism of the time. Despite ideals, women were held back in their homes and by society.

Obviously, suffrage is just one element of feminism, albeit probably one of the most important ones. But just think, before all of the feminist mumbo jumbo started, women had few property rights, rarely got custody of their children in cases of divorce, were relegated to being teachers and nannies and had no solid place in academia. The fact that those things have all changed now is not the result of men deciding to give their wives more freedom or a mere act of God; for the most part, feminists earned it.

I’m not really sure how I avoided thinking about feminism until college; it comes up everywhere—in movies, novels, popular culture and history. Nearly every study has a gender component. So I guess at some point, I opened my eyes and started looking for them, and I have realized how indebted I am to the women who have called themselves feminists. Without them, I would not have the memorable experience of casting my first presidential ballot. I would not be under the terrible stress of applying for jobs and to grad schools, but I would be applying for husbands, and, really, the world as I know it would not exist. And so I have gradually erased that negative stereotype in my mind and replaced the angry girl with a much less concrete figure that takes hundreds of forms with all kinds of hair, clothes and sexual preferences. I am a feminist because I am fascinated by the trajectory of my gender, because I am proud of how far we have come, because I am dedicated to making sure that my rights are never infringed upon because I am female.