Did you know that in 1872 a woman ran for the presidency with Frederick Douglass as her running mate? Victoria Woodhull ran on the Equal Rights Party ticket and made a bid for the White House before women even had the right to vote.

Did you know that women used to chain themselves to the fence of the White

House, endure torture in American prisons and persevered for 60 years to get the right to vote? Other women went to jail in order to provide women information on birth control methods so they would be able to control the number of children they had.

Instead of sitting by, this last century has brought us a landscape of women who have kicked down the door of a patriarchal society to give the next generation opportunities they never had. But that doesn’t mean we have reached a point where women are truly equal.

Last week, the ISU Department of Public Safety released a report disclosing the information on sexual assault on Iowa State’s campus. It found nine cases of sexual assault reported to the office. However, the Sexual Assault Response Team reported 49 such cases.

Why don’t women report this kind of assault? For any number of reasons: fear of not being believed, fear of being victimized again by the judicial system, shame, wanting to forget the assault or not recognizing the attack as assault.

Even strong, educated women apparently have these same fears as they make attempts to address both the issue of the assault and the issue of managing the crime committed against them. It’s like having your house robbed and getting sexually harassed at the same time.

There are both emotional and physical effects of sexual assault that affect women deeply, and I was not at all surprised by the difference in numbers between SART and DPS.

Sexual assault leaves a woman feeling vulnerable, fearful and untrusting of those she used to trust. Reporting this kind of very personal information to a police officer makes the situation even more real, more terrifying and brings the vulnerability of being simply female closer to home.

However, women who are sexually assaulted and do report the problem are doing a great service to other women who remain silent in their pain. They are acknowledging that they are bigger than their assailant, larger than their pain and strong enough to win back their own power.

Any time a woman makes a stand on her own behalf as a woman, she is making a stand for all women, regardless if she intends to or not. My femininity and the femininity of other women are all interconnected because of the common plights of being female.

There are tons of statistics that can show how gender disadvantages women, from the pay gap to the various other social and political disadvantages women face because of their anatomy.

It’s easy for us, the educated, closed off and privileged to deny that things like abuse, sexual assault and rape happen because they don’t stare us in the face everyday.

Then, at some point, the reality of being female, young and somewhat defenseless is made apparent, and, suddenly, women understand what it means to be just like all the other women before her who have been beaten down by men, the system or gender.

Although it’s not always easy to be a girl, women can be comforted by the fact that their struggle is the struggle of all women.

They are not alone, and there are so many others who have been through this trial of femininity as well.