Preet Didbal became the first Sikh woman to be selected as a Mayor of a city in the United States last month when the council members picked her lead the Yuba city in California. She was sworn in as the Yuba City mayor on Tuesday.
Born and raised in the US, Ms Didbal’s parents migrated from India nearly five decades ago and worked on farms in California. Ms Didbal also spent her teenage years in orchards picking and canning peaches.
She is the first person in her family to have a college degree.
Having spent nearly two decades in civil service, working for the California Correctional Health Care Services, she was also the first woman Sikh member in any council in the United States. She was elected the deputy mayor by the Yuba city council last year.
She says it hasn't been an easy journey to the top as a woman.
"We tend not to have a voice at this level and I want to express that women are equal as my parents did with us," said Ms Didbal.
Ms Didbal is a sexual assault survivor. She said a man had mixed something in her drink during a gathering with friends and raped her when she was 19.
“I carried shame for many years,” she told . “I tried to continue as a student at UC Davis for a year and a half -- and it wasn’t going well. I needed to be fixed.”
She said her family left Yuba City for three years which was home to a small community.
Ms Didbal said things changed when her father stepped in to stand behind her.
She began speaking about her sexual assault a little over a year ago during a community forum on bullying.
Preet Didbal with her daughter Arianna Khan. Source: Facebook
“We have to be able to express what's happening in the real world. I'm a single mom. I have a daughter. She is now the same age, going off to college,” said Ms Didbal.
“It's tough to talk about, it still is. I hope, that if anything, just being in this position I can lend to other women who have been through it -- or going through it.”
