This morning on BART, I was standing in the aisle on a pretty uncrowded train. As I’m standing there, the train doors open and a man gets on. He proceeds to make his way down the mostly open aisle, pushes his way past me, and stands almost right where I am — forcing me to move over so that I’m not literally pressed right up against him. I looked around, baffled, because there was so much space everywhere else on the train — and despite that, he’d still made the decision to push his way to right where I was standing, and take my spot.

And I don’t know if it’s because I’m a fairly nice person (or at least I’d like to think I am), or because I’m a woman and I don’t want to cause a scene, but I just moved over. I didn’t speak up, I didn’t tap him and politely explain that he had just encroached on my space and forced me to move for no good reason. I just gave him the space he had rudely forced himself into.

And maybe this is petty and small, but I was annoyed. And I started thinking about all the small ways that I, as a woman, accommodate the men around me. The way I make myself smaller, take up less space, and shuffle to the side on crowded trains, while the men stand tall and fill up space they apparently feel is rightfully theirs, without apology. The way I laugh and look around nervously when someone hits on me — not wanting to cause a scene by shouting, “Look at my left hand! I’m not available!” even though I’m uncomfortable. (The closest I came to this was when I was 6 months — and very visibly — pregnant, and a man hit on me. I looked him straight in the eye and said, “Um, I’m PREGNANT.” and walked away.)

As women, we all do this. We learn the art of diffusing situations early. Laugh away your discomfort. Keep smiling as he pursues you more and more aggressively — it’s better to let him down gently and not cause a scene, even though you’ve said “no” four times already. Men are taught to be strong, relentless, so maybe it’s no wonder that they don’t get the hint. “No” is just a jumping off point to start negotiation, because “she’s just playing hard to get.”

Now that I have a daughter of my own, I hope that I can teach her that she can cause a scene. She can be as loud as she wants. She can take up space. She can look someone directly in the eye and say, “No” and have it be the end of the discussion. She can stand her ground and not apologize for being strong. She can be “bossy” and “shrill” and “crazy” and “high-maintenance” and “spoiled” — because you can bet that if she were a boy she would just be “headstrong” or “a leader” or “a guy who can get the job done.”

Prim — I hope I can teach you that you are important, successful, and worthy of peoples’ time and respect. You deserve to be heard and treated (and compensated) equally. And it doesn’t matter whether you’re the CEO of a company or struggling to find a job, whether you manage a team of 20 or manage a household, whether you have a spouse or children or a career or all of the above.

You are smart. You are kind. YOU ARE IMPORTANT.

(And your mama loves you a whooooole lot.)