If you want people to improve, you must promote curiosity and indulge their questions. Even when those questions are stupid (in some fashion). Just about the easiest way to shut people up and send them back into their heads, with their patriarchal stereotypes unchallenged, is to tell them that the questions they're asking are wrong.

The industry is crawling. We'd like it to be running, but we need to be patient and allow it to walk first. You cannot build mutual understanding without patience.