IN 1973, my mother’s first husband was killed in a car crash in downtown St. Louis. My brother, Jason, was nine months old. In swift succession, my mother lost the following things: the father of her first child; access to a credit card; her car insurance; and the ability to take out a loan. The first was terrible luck. The other things were taken from her because she was a single woman — with a son, to boot — it was the 1970s, and, as she put it, “you were not considered legitimate at that time unless you had a man in your life.”

Four decades later, my mom is looking forward to having the chance to vote, she hopes, for this country’s first female president. She and Hillary Clinton are a year apart in age. Though my mom’s experiences are so different from my own, they serve as a constant reminder to me of the work it’s taken for Mrs. Clinton to get where she is today, and the force of society’s attitudes about women, and their value, that she has been pushing against.

My mom described to me the day she got the call about the cancellation of her car insurance. Because of her husband’s accident, the insurance company simply took it away. Even at the time, this wasn’t legal, but it’s what happened. She panicked and cried and pleaded. Without car insurance, she couldn’t safely drive her car, so she couldn’t get a job. She called three different insurance companies until finally, she got on the line with a kindhearted agent — the same one she loyally uses to this day. He advised her to get into her car and drive carefully to his office, so he could see what he could do.

She got the insurance. So now she could get to work, if she had a job. Before her husband died, she’d been taking care of Jason during the day, and going to school for her college degree at night. But now she needed an income and when she got to the last round of interviewing in a research department at a local university, she felt hopeful.