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Originally Posted by Katie_UPS
If you want to help women in STEM, start by listening to women in STEM and not arguing against what they say. If a girl says someone creeped her out, don't argue that it wasn't creepy.
If a student is not comfortable taking care of the situation themselves, they have every right to ask a mentor for help. Like Amanda said, "[A mentor would] rather be dragged aside by students 1000 times than have one student feel uncomfortable at an event."
How do we make STEM a better place for women? By supporting women who say "something made me uncomfortable" instead of saying "deal with it." Because saying "deal with it" or making excuses for it, as AmiableVariable pointed out, does not help anybody.
If a person is uncomfortable with another person's actions, ask how you can help correct the situation. Maybe they just want moral support but can deal with the person themselves or maybe they will want someone step in and do the talking. Ask and respect their answer.
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Quote:
Originally Posted by jweston
The way to fix this is to change our culture so girls feel completely secure to assert themselves whenever and however they want within the same bounds we'd apply to boys.
A girl who has been conditioned to "be nice" (just go along with it) is like one who has been taught to never yell or scream, even when hit with a hammer. It makes it that much harder for the person with the hammer to realize they've made contact..
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Quote:
Originally Posted by jweston
I do not share your confidence that girls will simply feel secure enough to be assertive and direct if you remove other people's crappy behavior, unless you're writing off girls who have already been conditioned to not be. This is something that starts early in life. Removing the cause does not undo the damage. You would not believe the amount of self-censoring that many girls and women go through.
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I completely agree with these whole posts. I also think that it can be important to tell students that *anything* that makes them feel uncomfortable can and should be dealt with, and that it's not mean to ask someone to stop making you uncomfortable. In fact, you're probably doing them a favor as well if they don't realize how their behavior is making others feel.
If someone asked me 5 years ago whether I wanted to have someone talk on my behalf or talk myself to the guy making me feel uncomfortable (this was not in a robotics context, initially), I probably would have said no out of a misguided sense of being nice. I didn't think he was intentionally creeping me out and I ascribed most of my discomfort to the fact that my friends were telling me I ought to feel uncomfortable. It undeniably would have been wrong for someone to talk to him anyway without hearing my thoughts on the issue first, but if someone explained (in the least patronizing way possible) that it would probably help him too I might have been more willing to face the embarrassing/awkward conversation and saved us both years of discomfort.