Girls Get On-the-Job Training : Event: Orange County businesses--from hospitals to moving companies--observe national ‘Take Our Daughters to Work Day.’

Anesthesiologist Nathan David Mann had two shadows as he conducted his duties at Kaiser Permanente Medical Center on Thursday: daughters Sarah, 7, and Rachel, 8.

Observing “Take Our Daughters to Work Day,” the sisters donned “scrubs” and accompanied their father as he met with other doctors and administrators at the Anaheim Hills hospital to discuss such topics as “anesthesia, morbidity and mortality” and “abdominal aorta aneurysms.”

While waiting to watch a gall bladder operation on a video screen and an ultrasound of a pregnant woman’s uterus, the girls were introduced to a 1-hour-old baby. When the action waned, they entertained themselves in the usual ways.

“Hey, guys, quit fighting,” Mann said.

Throngs of girls, and some boys, trailed their parents into the workplace Thursday as Orange County celebrated the nationwide event, which was launched by the Ms. Foundation for Women three years ago after studies showed that many girls suffer a drop in self-esteem as they enter adolescence.

Some Orange County businesses hailed the day, welcoming children to type letters, fax memos, examine computers or watch movers relocate families. Others mostly ignored the event but allowed employees to haul along their children if they chose.

Observed by thousands of companies around the nation, the event has drawn fire from opponents who think it’s wrong to single out girls for such attention. Some companies have renamed the event to include boys.

“My sons are really bent because they don’t have a national ‘Take Your Sons to Work Day,’ ” said Laguna Beach resident Terrie Neptune, adding that one son called it “female chauvinistic.”

Still, Neptune, a technical support coordinator for Infotech Development Inc., a Costa Mesa firm that provides hardware and software to the federal government, had her 13-year-old daughter, Laurelee, with her on Thursday.

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

Irvine’s AST Research simply dubbed Thursday “Take Our Children to Work Day” and invited boys.

“AST certainly doesn’t differ between the talents and skills of our male and female employees, so we thought it was only fair to expose both sons and daughters to the opportunities available here,” said Michele Richards, manager of administrative programs.

About 40 boys and girls rumbled through the carpeted hallways of that computer manufacturing company Thursday. After sharing pizza with the company’s president and chief executive officer, the youngsters, ages 12 and up, took part in a video conference with children at the company’s Ft. Worth, Tex., office.

Sean Folkins, a sixth-grader from Fountain Valley Elementary School whose mother works at AST, said he wanted to learn “how they test the computers and motherboards and hard drives and stuff like that.”

But despite the ease with which computer lingo rolls off Sean’s tongue, what he really wants to be when he grows up, he said, is a baseball player.

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Event organizers said that 25 million Americans took their daughters to work last year and that even more were expected to participate Thursday. “Take Our Daughters to Work Day” has now spread to other countries, such as Germany, Israel, Singapore and Chile.

At the Jet Propulsion Laboratory in Pasadena, 230 kids visited the facility where spacecraft are assembled. Some girls practiced the art of Japanese ink painting at the Los Angeles County Museum of Art, while others visited an emergency room and met with women doctors and therapists at the UCLA Medical Center.

Three dozen girls accompanied their parents to accounting and consulting firm Deloitte & Touche in downtown Los Angeles, while at Toyota Motor Sales in Torrance, more than 70 girls simulated an automobile assembly line with toy cars and trucks.

Though many companies welcomed sons as well as daughters, the Ms. Foundation reiterated that the day is meant for girls, who it says are “eclipsed” when boys show up. The event particularly targets girls between the ages of 9 and 16.

The day is important, organizers said, because studies have shown that 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 on their mental capabilities.

“By people saying it should be ‘Take Our Children to Work Day,’ it dilutes the message of the day,” said spokeswoman Lauren Wechsler. “Everyone knows it’s a boy’s and man’s world, especially little girls.”

But Wechsler admitted that there has been “an enormous amount of backlash” against having a day for girls only.

The Ms. Foundation, located in New York, worked with men’s groups to develop a curriculum especially for the boys who were left behind in classrooms Thursday. The lesson plan addresses gender roles and gender 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 Men’s Project. “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.”

Despite ongoing controversy, the Ms. Foundation is expanding its efforts to help young females, reaching into the inner cities to reach some who may have fewer opportunities to rub shoulders with success. And the word daughters is used broadly, Wechsler said. “It’s not just mothers and fathers and their daughters; it’s our nation’s daughters,” she said.

College Marketplace, a nonprofit educational organization in Los Angeles that helps provide opportunities for inner-city youths, connected one Los Angeles High School student with an Orange County moving company Thursday so she could see how such businesses operate.

Anita Price, relocation coordinator for Amador Worldwide Moving & Storage in Anaheim, ushered her charge through the steps required to move a family, from loading cartons and storing furniture to advertising and billing.

“Usually, when young girls think of a moving company, they just think of it as big guys coming and moving their stuff around,” Price said. “But there’s so much more to it than that.”

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Some large Orange County companies chose not to actively participate in the event.

Disneyland, the business most youngsters might choose to examine, allowed employees to bring their children if they wished--as did the Irvine Co., the county’s largest landowner--but did not promote the event.

Parents who did participate may have accomplished at least one goal: helping their children understand where they disappear to each day. After a day of sending faxes and writing letters, Laurelee Neptune said she now has a better appreciation of her mother’s work.

“Before I came here, I didn’t really think she did anything,” Laurelee said. “And now I understand what she does.”

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Times correspondent Karen Kaplan contributed to this report.