The MsUnderstood Programme aims to improve local and national responses to young peopleâs experiences of gender inequality. Check out our website.
The MsUnderstood Programme aims to improve local and national responses to young peopleâs experiences of gender inequality. Check out our website.
Susan B. Anthony, Bob Moses, Wajeha al-Hawaidar; to name but a few of the men and women who have dedicated their lives to achieving universal suffrage, so that we all may vote. This is not a battle which started and finished with the Suffragettes, or with the black civil-rights campaign, but one that continues today. Women in Saudi Arabia are still awaiting the day in 2015, when, at last, they will be able use their vote for the very first time in their country’s history.
I am 17 and a half years old, and last October marked the second time that I used my right to vote. Jersey, a tiny nine-by-five island, 14 miles off the coast of France; high in off-shore banking accounts, milk and low on…taxes, but more importantly (and perhaps less contentiously) on voting age. In 2008, the States of Jersey, following in the footsteps of Brazil and Nicaragua, decided to extend the right to vote to young people aged 16 and 17. My right to vote is not something that I tend to take lightly. I fully appreciate its levity, and the brazen context in which it was forged. I feel the courage of the Suffragettes drive me as I mark the cross on my ballot paper, bold and unashamed - I would like to disclose that Emmeline Pankhurst did not coerce me into voting for anything or anyone in particular…it was a metaphor.