During Women’s History Month, on March 4 and 11, the Sweetwater Union High School District (SUHSD) conducted its first women’s symposium through a webinar. Bonita Vista High (BVH) Language teacher and SUHSD World Language Teacher on Special Assignment (TOSA) Marina Dillingham facilitated the discussion between female SUHSD alumnae along with Math TOSA Sara Sanchez. 

The idea originated as a resolution passed for Women’s History Month, this made it SUHSD’s goal to disseminate information on Women’s Rights topics. It was decided that the best way to fulfill this goal would be through a panel of female alumnae from Chula Vista High (CVH), Montgomery High (MH) and Bonita Vista High (BVH). 

“I was already working on [Women’s History Month] because I do it in class all the time. So I already had a lot of materials that I shared with the world language teachers. When they asked ‘Who’d like to work on this?’ myself and Sarah Sanchez said we wanted to work on that,” Dillingham said. 

The symposium posed the same three questions on both days, the only change was the participants on the panel. On March 4, the only BVH alumni was Suman Gupta, Ph.D., class of 2006. In response to the first question—“How has being a woman affected your education, career or life experiences?”—Gupta talked about the difficulty she faces with stereotypes in the medical field and boldly stated, “don’t be scared to make waves.”

The symposium on March 11 had a stronger BVH presence with alumni Gloria Monroy class of 2017, Olga Moskvina class of 2006, Claudia Bobadilla class of 2017 and Leah Mashian class of 2009 in attendance. 

“Being a woman has given me the gift of sisterhood,” Bobadilla said in response to question one. 

The second question—“Tell us about an important woman in your life who has inspired you?”—received a plethora of answers. Mashian shared how the speech pathologist she shadowed not only motivated her to pursue her career but led to her decision to work in Speech Language Pathology Pediatrics. 

“Anything and everything seems impossible until it’s done,” Mashian said. 

Moskvina sent a special message to the girls listening to the discussion in response to the third question—“What message or advice do you have for today’s women and girls?” She said, “don’t try to achieve everything.” She shared that life will take you to unexpected places and reminded listeners to “be smart because you’ll never know where you’ll end up.” 

After the three main questions were answered a Q&A opened up to attendees, one of the questions was “Do you think gender equality has been achieved?” Monroy answered by saying that in some aspects gender equality has been achieved, while gender equity on the other hand “not so much.” Moskvina reminded young girls that men shouldn’t be excluded from important conversations such as gender equality and to be careful to not take accusatory tones when it is discussed. 

In both meetings Gupta and Monroy abruptly exclaimed to always ask for a salary raise, both instances led to all the panelists smiling and eagerly nodding their heads. Dillingham felt it was important to have an opportunity for young women to have role models to look up to.

“I’m a woman. It’s important for women to have representation. It’s good for all of you young women who are in school to see what you can do as a woman because all of these women in power who are speaking are amazing women,” Dillingham said.