“They don’t have a Bimah to circle. The were just walking in stupid circles.”
First off, they were probably simply copying what the men were doing because they assumed that was the correct way to do things. Watching and learning, without understanding, which is not all that different from what most men are doing. You went around, they went around. You went outside for part of the circuit, so did they. Probably sincere individuals whose only fault is ignorance. Just like most of their male counterparts on your side of the ‘tza.
Second, what a doorknob. Going around the bimah is a stupid circle too. We used to walk around the mizbeach, but now we do the best we can to remind ourselves of that. So who says that if they walk around a chumash on a table in their section thay they are any more stupid than you walking around a scroll on a bimah? A sincere argument can be made that the zecher is equal. Wrong maybe, but sincere.