Girls Get a Look at What Work Is All About : Daughters--and Sons--Learn What Parents Do on the Job

At Deloitte & Touche in Downtown Los Angeles on Thursday, Stephanie Vandehey spent part of her afternoon interviewing Amy Thomas for a job in an ice cream parlor.

“Are you really good at using a cash register?” 9-year-old Stephanie asked.

“It’s one of my favorite things to do,” Amy, 10, replied.

Based on that--and the fact that she loves “all flavors of ice cream”--Amy was hired for the job. The decision was made by a committee of young women visiting Deloitte for “Take Our Daughters to Work Day.”

Like the accounting and consulting firm, thousands of companies in Los Angeles and across the nation invited daughters--and in many cases, sons--into their workplaces as they observed the third annual event, sponsored by the Ms. Foundation for Women in New York. Children between the ages of 9 and 16 skipped school to find answers to the question, “What do mommy and daddy do all day?”

Last year, 25 million parents took their daughters to work, and even more were expected to participate Thursday, according to the Ms. Foundation. Daughters’ Day has now spread to countries such as Germany, Israel, Singapore and Chile.

At the Jet Propulsion Laboratory in Pasadena, Jessica Horn, 10, donned a static-free lab coat and took an air shower to blow dust off her body. Then her mother, planetary scientist Linda Horn, took her into the lab’s spacecraft assembly facility and showed her the life-size model of the Cassini orbiter, which will be launched to Saturn in 1997.

The NASA laboratory opened up this year’s event to sons as well as daughters, as did about half the participating companies in Southern California.

Hewlett-Packard hosted sons and daughters at its Los Angeles sales office and taught them how to surf the Internet. Last year, the computer and electronics manufacturer hosted only girls, and that “raised some questions that perhaps to focus on daughters was preferential treatment,” spokesman Steven Cavallero said.

But Daughters’ Day organizers said that kind of thinking misses the point of the event. The Ms. Foundation launched the day in 1993 in response to a battery of studies that concluded adolescent girls often receive less attention in school, have lower expectations than boys and tend to judge themselves based on aspects of their physical appearance rather than mental capabilities.

“The idea of taking your daughters to work is not that it’s a career day but that it’s a day for girls to be in the workplace and see their potential,” said Laura Deutsch, director of community programs at the Hollywood Policy Center, which helped coordinate the event in California. “It’s not about sexism at all. It’s about being 10 and girls being shy and boys being loud.”

Gail Maynor, who heads up Daughters’ Day for the Ms. Foundation, challenged adults who complained about the exclusion of boys to organize a separate event. A handful of companies, including Toyota and Deloitte, are planning “Take Our Sons to Work” days for later in the year.

The New York Assn. of Black Journalists turned Thursday into “Brothers Back to School Day,” with working professionals returning to classrooms to talk about careers with the boys left behind. Participants also discussed “boys’ issues,” such as the expectation that a man should be the breadwinner for his family, said Ron Scott, who runs a public relations agency.

The Oakland Men’s Project worked with the Ms. Foundation to develop a curriculum especially for the boys who were left behind in classrooms Thursday. The lesson plan concentrated on gender roles and stereotypes, such as the idea that caring for children, the sick and the elderly is women’s work.

“We talk about men taking responsibility for looking at the way women are treated in society,” said Heru-Nefera Amen, project director for the Oakland-based group. “We teach young men about healthy, nonviolent male bonding that is supportive to community development, not the stereotypical John Wayne sort of training that men get.”

Meanwhile, in Torrance, daughters and nieces simulated an automobile assembly line with toy cars and trucks at the Toyota Motor Sales office. Girls practiced the art of Japanese ink painting at the Los Angeles County Museum of Art, while at the UCLA Medical Center they visited an emergency room and nursery and questioned women doctors, nurses and physical therapists.

In Anaheim Hills, anesthesiologist Nathan David Mann had two shadows as he conducted his duties at Kaiser Permanente on Thursday: daughters Sarah, 7, and Rachel, 8. The sisters donned miniature scrubs and accompanied their dad to view an ultrasound of a pregnant woman’s uterus and a video of a gall bladder surgery.

Daughters of Burbank city employees received business cards and practiced their networking skills Thursday. Despite requests to open the event to boys, the day remained strictly for girls, said Sandra Williams, a Burbank personnel services manager.

“When girls are in the same room as boys, the boys raise their hands, ask questions and take the front seats,” Williams said. “This gives girls an opportunity to shine on their own.”

Terrie Neptune, a technical support coordinator for Infotech Development Inc. in Costa Mesa, said her sons “are really bent because they don’t have a national ‘Take Your Sons to Work Day.’ ”

Still, Neptune brought her 13-year-old daughter Laurelee with her to work Thursday.

“I was a stay-at-home mother until several years ago,” Neptune said. Laurelee’s “very bright and I think it’s very important for her to see that women can work in any field they want.”

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Times correspondent Leslie Earnest in Orange County contributed to this report.