I remember sitting in my high school history class, and my teacher, Beth Starichino, desperately trying to encourage me to join a Women’s Rights organization. At the time, I was stupid and claimed that women had equal rights, at least in the western world. I’ll never forget the look on her face, when she said, “when you’re older, you’ll think differently.” At the time, I laughed, the way any sixteen year girl that got good grades and had a sense of entitlement would laugh at such a statement, having no clue what discrimination looked like, either as a woman or as a person with a disability. I’m joining the Women’s Equality Party because it’s taken me sixteen years to to admit to myself, to the world, to her, that’s she’s right. It’s taken me sixteen years to admit that there’s something wrong when co-workers call me irrational just because I stand up for my ideas. There is something wrong when the boy I’m dating calls me ‘a proud woman’ and says it like it’s a bad thing. There is something wrong in this world where we can not find a reasonable way to provide new mothers with affordable childcare, where a woman still has to make a decision whether or not to chase her own dreams in the career of her choosing or to be a mom. Where girls at the age of twelve or thirteen would rather be pretty than smart, and where it has been scientifically proven that if a man behaves one way, he is called assertive, but if a woman behaves the same way, she is called a bitch. I joined the Women’s Equality Party in the UK because I want to make history and make sure that for the next generation, when they talk about equal rights between the genders, they can say that this fight is over, and the teacher will agree that they are right.