WAUSAU — A woman has been voted onto the Hmong 18 Council of Wisconsin Inc.'s leadership team for the first time in history in an election that promises to change the course of the Hmong in America.
Mao Khang, 42 of Wausau, an advocate for victims of domestic and sexual abuse at The Women's Community, was elected as one of two vice presidents on the team of president-elect Blia Yao Lo, 52, of Waunakee. The team of Lo, Khang and the other vice president, Meng Lee, a police detective who lives in the Appleton area, garnered 589 votes in Saturday's election, 43 percent of the 1,372 people who voted in the three-candidate election.
Lo and his team will lead the Hmong 18 Council from Jan. 1, 2015, to Dec. 31, 2019. The organization oversees the state's Hmong community and influences cultural issues such as marriages, the treatment of women and the preservation of cultural practices that have been part of Hmong life for generations.
Khang's election is significant not only as a step toward gender equity in the leadership team, but it also signals a willingness to confront some of the Hmong culture's most difficult problems as it evolves from the highly patriarchal society it has been for centuries.
"I'm pleased," Khang said. "It's good to have conversation opening up on gender equity, domestic violence and sexual assault."
Khang has worked on those issues in the Hmong community through The Women's Community, often coming in conflict with a clan system that sometimes allowed the cultural marriage of teenagers and supported the notion that a married couple should not separate even in the face of violence.
Khang also has made inroads into the problem by helping organize training sessions for clan leaders about domestic and sexual abuse that outline U.S. law. She hopes that the Hmong 18 Council can help pass legislation at the state level that would allow a "mekong" — a Hmong leader who can perform cultural weddings — to be certified to perform legally-binding weddings as well. Those mekong would then be trained on civil law and held accountable for the marriages they perform.
"I think we're going to reduce early marriages," Khang said.
Lo said the issue is "very important" because it can help eliminate the marriages of young girls against their will, but also can help maintain other deeper Hmong marriage traditions. "We would like to maintain our cultural heritage," Lo said.
With Khang on the winning presidential team, the election was "a truly historic event, not just for the Hmong in Wisconsin and the United States, but the world over," said Thai Vue, the co-chairman of the Central Election Committee of the Hmong 18 Council and the executive director of the Wisconsin United Coalition of Mutual Assistance Associations, a collective of Hmong cultural advocacy agencies, including Wausau's Hmong American Center.
Hmong women have held elected leadership positions in other areas, such as government, but Vue doesn't know of any other Hmong cultural institution to have a woman leader voted in by Hmong people. Vue said Lo also made an effort to include young Hmong people and a single mother on his team.
"Strategically, it's a much more true representation of what the Hmong family is today," Vue said.
Two other candidates were in the race: Nao Vai Yang of Milwaukee received 464 votes, or 34 percent; and Xou Khang of Wisconsin Rapids received 319 votes, or 23 percent.
Keith Uhlig can be reached at 715-845-0651. Find him on Twitter as @UhligK.
http://www.wausaudailyherald.com/story/news/local/2014/11/10/hmong-council-election/18822851/