In theory, politics is not a topic of conversation reserved for five-year-old girls on the way to kindergarten in the morning, but my daughter and I dove into the topic all the same as we were listening to the news on the way to school Wednesday.

“We get to go vote for a new president next year, baby,” I said to my daughter, who has accompanied me to the polls on multiple occasions. “Are you going to go with me to vote?”

“Sure, daddy,” she replied with a big smile. “Who are we going to vote for?”

“I don’t know. Would you like to vote for a lady this year?”

“Sure.”

So, I ran down the list of women currently vying for the Democratic presidential nomination – when I landed on Tulsi Gabbard, the former active duty guard member now representing Hawaii in the U.S. House of Representatives, my daughter’s eyes lit up.

“Tulsi,” she said. “She sounds like a nice man.”

I laughed, “She’s not a man, sweetheart. She’s a woman.”

“Oh,” my little girl beamed. “Can she still be president even if she’s not a boy?”

“Of course, darling,” I replied, turning to glance at her for a moment. “It’s hard for little girls and women in this country because, for so long, boys have been in charge of everything and haven’t given girls the chance to be in charge. But girls can do everything that boys can do and they should certainly be allowed to, yeah?”

“Yeah, daddy,” she replied with a little bounce in her seat. “I think we’re going to vote for a girl.”

While this may come across as a simplistic conversation between a tiny girl and her overly-doting father, to me it underscores a very real threat to the girls and women of this nation – that a kindergartener simply assumed there are jobs that only men can hold indicates a culture of male dominance in this country that permeates every aspect of American life, even the very walls of a home that strives daily to undermine such notions.

In our home, there are no jobs reserved specifically for me or my wife – we both wash and fold clothes, we both cut grass, we both clean dishes, we both cook dinner, we both take out the trash and, in general, collaborate in every domestic task required to maintain a household.

But, as every parent knows, the world is much bigger than home – my daughter’s  learning from teachers and friends at school, she’s learning from her cousins and aunts and uncles and grandmothers, she’s learning from television shows and movies and books.

For me, the idea that my daughter should grow up in a world where she feels she is ineligible for certain jobs or opportunities because she is a young woman is wholly unacceptable – on the contrary, she should feel that she can do anything she gets ready to, whether it’s throwing a baseball, swinging a hammer or leading the nation.

While I can’t confidently vouch for Gabbard’s policies or qualifications any more than I can those of the other dozen or so candidates running for the Democratic Party’s 2020 nomination, I am confident that dotting the circle beside a woman’s name on that ballot will mean the world to my daughter and, whether other parents know it or not, it will do wonders for little girls across the nation as well.