Dignity Is Too High a Price for Work

This is how it went last week:

On Monday, a young reporter who was once an intern at The Times stopped by to chat. In her new job in another state, she is the only woman in the features section of a newspaper. Her male colleagues, she said, joke constantly about how their female co-workers might react to being raped. They send her sexually explicit e-mail, and one of them unexpectedly showed up outside her window at 3 a.m. She made a fuss; he was fired. But the jokes and harassment continue. Will her career be adversely affected, she wondered, if she continues to complain?

On Wednesday, I read a long, depressing story in the business section of the New York Times about a group of bond sellers at the third-largest discount brokerage in the country. In a complaint filed with the federal government, the brokerage employees claimed that they were illegally demoted from top positions by company executives. The executives were men; the demoted workers were women. One said her boss told her that she needed to spend more time with her children. Another said her boss looked at her wedding ring and said, “Do you really need to work?” The headline on the story pretty much said it all: “Young White Men Only, Please.”

On Thursday, I stood on a riser in the cafeteria of The Times’ sprawling Valley plant in Chatsworth and looked out at a roomful of young, female faces. It was “Take Our Daughters to Work Day.” I spoke to the girls about my job and told them that while working conditions and job opportunities for women in the newspaper business are better than they used to be, there is plenty of room for improvement. At the end of my talk, one girl raised her hand. “Do you wish there were more women writing columns at The Times?”

“So glad you asked,” I replied, launching into an answer that, on reflection, was a long-winded way of saying, “Hell, yes.”

On Friday, I lunched in the ballroom of a big hotel in Woodland Hills, one of many “celebrity guests” at a tribute to secretaries, sponsored by the Arthritis Foundation. One of the highlights of the event was the presentation of the Secretary of the Year Award.

Half a dozen secretaries were called to the stage to receive their gifts. Need I point out that all were female? Secretaries are a critical part of the labor force, they were reminded in glowing speeches. Of course, no one wanted to spoil the lunch by mentioning that for the responsibilities they shoulder, the pay is relatively poor. As I watched, I thought of an essay on secretaries I had read the week before, written by the confidential secretary to the managing editor of the Washington Post.

“It isn’t a bad way to pay the bills,” wrote Mary Ishimoto Morris. But “from the time my daughters were old enough to understand that Mom had a job, I have branded into their impressionable minds that secretarial work is something they don’t want to do. They’re too intelligent, too independent, too creative, too good.”

On Sunday, at a brunch with some new friends, a rock singer-songwriter who has teetered on the verge of a big record deal told us about her most memorable meeting with an important record company executive. In the middle of their conversation, the executive--amid photographs of his wife and young child--took down his pants and looked at her expectantly. She laughed. He didn’t. She is now working as a bookkeeper and free-lance computer consultant.

This is, to put it mildly, a confusing moment in history for American women and girls.

Scratch that. It’s confusing for everyone.

This year saw a growing backlash to Take Our Daughters to Work Day. Some boys were understandably miffed at being left out, and plenty of their parents were upset, too, accusing the day’s organizers of imposing on the American workplace some sort of wrongheaded feminist overcompensation for past slights. To placate hurt feelings and steer clear of controversy, some employers reacted by inviting sons to join daughters last week, and some companies said they were planning “Take Our Sons” days later in the year.

I am one of many who initially thought Take Our Daughters to Work Day was a wonderful idea, then reconsidered because excluding boys just didn’t feel right.

But I can now report that the confluence in one week of the harassed reporter, the demoted brokers, the perceptive question about female columnists, the secretaries in the ballroom and the aspiring rock star have pushed me from the “ambivalent” to the “all for it” side of the ledger.

Taking daughters to work is not about excluding boys. It is about showing girls the opportunities they have the right to dream of and to pursue, even if the corporate playing field is still often tilted in favor of boys and men.

(This year, in an impressive, positive gesture, some men’s groups came up with imaginative ways to keep boys from feeling left behind: They visited schools and talked about gender roles and stereotypes imposed unfairly on boys.)

Girls need to be shown the possibilities. They need to know that they can aspire to be anything they want without someone stomping on their dignity or making their work life hell.

They need to know they can be whatever they can conceive of: Secretaries. Truck drivers. Newspaper columnists.

Even, God forbid, rock stars.