For the Women’s Panel, we discussed topics ranging from what being a woman means to us and what we can do to improve the situation on campus for women. We held this discussion in honor of Women’s History Month to further improve and elevate women with fresh ideas and open conversation.
What being a women means to us in our panel was this idea of being feminine, motherly, and nurturing. What empowers us is the fact that since Bryant is a male dominated campus, in classes we are typically the only women in the room and seeing how we can do what men can do helps us know we can keep up, even in the real world. It is also reassuring that despite the fact that there are many women dominated jobs, such as teaching and nursing we can also be business women and succeed.
We also acknowledged the struggles we face as women on and off campus. On Campus, we discussed that we did not feel that we have many struggles or obstacles due to having a closed campus with a security booth. We don’t feel unsafe walking alone at night because there are only approved guests and students on campus. Off Campus, there is more danger with cat-calling and having to react in that situation. One thing that was noted about on campus was the fact that the gym is male dominated and it can be uncomfortable for women to want to go to the gym out of fear of being judged and recorded.
What we think can be improved at Bryant to improve these situations and obstacles would be to potentially make a women’s only hour at the gym or educating men more on women’s emotions and health since we do have a lot of women’s empowerment organizations and clubs already.
We also discussed if our gender identity made us feel less safe and what we can do to stay safe as a woman. We all agreed that unfortunately that women are commonly impacted by sexual assault the most, but we acknowledged that men can be impacted by this too. To stay safe we listed a few precautionary measures to take such as walking home with a friend and not alone, at parties never taking drinks from people, never leaving your drink out at a party and if you do dump it out, taking a self defense class, sharing your location with friends, know your resources for reporting things and what is considered time-sensitive for reporting, and watching out for other women even if they are not directly in your friend group.
These were some of the questions we discussed which lead to interesting topics being brought up and allowed us to having great conversation. We hope these questions can help us inspire others to bring up these topics on their campuses to make more changes for women in the future as well.