Career Day Helps Girls Shed Job Stereotypes

Lucie Mundy, 18, used to dream about finding the perfect husband to take care of her while she raised their children. Now, as she plans her teaching career, she has no intention of relying on a man.

Christine Kim, 16, wants to be a psychiatrist or social worker. She says marriage will have to wait until after she turns 29.

Laura Collins, 17, plans to study either civil engineering or physical therapy at UCLA. Although she would like to marry someday, she first plans to achieve her own financial security.

While Torrance school officials are pleased that these three young women are making plans for an independent future, they fear that too many of their female peers are not.

On Tuesday, officials staged the district’s seventh Career Day for High School Girls, featuring women workers from a jetliner mechanic and a spacecraft inspector to an advertising executive and a talent agent.

“The main thing we’re trying to tell them is, when you’re planning on what you’re going to do with the rest of your life, don’t count on Prince Charming,” said Dee Whipple, a volunteer from the American Assn. of University Women, who has been involved in each of the career days.

“The other thing we’re trying to tell them is, you don’t have to be a secretary. You don’t have to be a hairdresser,” Whipple said.

The conference, funded in part by a “sex equity grant” from the State Department of Education, focused on women speakers who work in male-dominated fields.

“This gives the girls the idea that they can do not just what people have told them they can do, but what they decide they want to do,” said school board President Owen Griffith. “In the health services field, they typically think of being nurses. We want them to realize that they can be doctors, too.”

The message appeared to get across to at least some of the 300 teen-age girls.

Asked which of the speakers’ jobs appealed to her most, 16-year-old Suzanne Kelly raised her voice to a cheer.

“The mechanic!” she said, raising her fists over her head and shaking her long, blond hair exuberantly. “Seeing a woman in charge of 18 men and supervising everything they do proves that this woman’s lib thing is working. . . . There are so many options open now. Instead of me working under some man, I can be working over some man.”

Many have long been used to the idea that they can do whatever they set their minds to do.

Collins, who will graduate from North High School this June and then attend UCLA on a basketball scholarship, laughed when told that school officials worry that girls her age are waiting for a knight in shining armor to come along and sweep them off their feet.

“I want to get married someday, but I want to make my own money,” Collins said.

But many girls said their friends are counting on being housewives.

“You ask them, ‘What are you going to do after high school?’ and they say, ‘Go to college,’ ” said Kim, the 16-year-old who plans to postpone marriage. “Then you ask them, ‘What about after college?’ and they say, ‘Oh, I’m going to get married and have four kids,’ and they mean it!”

Kim and her friends said they find themselves fighting stereotypes set up by their parents.

“I told my dad I didn’t want to get married until I’m 29 or so, and he nearly died,” she said. “He said, ‘What? No one will want you. You’ll be too old.’ ”

Kim’s friend, 15-year-old Heather Forbes, said she wants to counsel disturbed children, but her father wants her to be a nurse.

“My dad is very traditional. My aunt was a nurse and my grandma was a nurse. He thinks all the doctors are male,” Forbes said.

Although Kim said her future earning power is important to her, she said she does not want “to be a slave to money.”

“I want to use the money. I don’t want the money to use me,” she said.

Although delighted that many girls at the conference are thinking ahead, Whipple said she realizes that many are too young to make career decisions now.

“Later, maybe many years from now, when they have to make a choice, they’ll remember something that was said at this conference,” Whipple said. “Even if it’s just the idea that they can go ahead and try anything, that’s a step in the right direction.”