Taking Our Daughters to Work--and Online
Emphasizing that jobs of the future will increasingly be technology-related, the sponsors of the annual Take Our Daughters to Work Day program are expanding into cyberspace.
The Ms. Foundation for Women, which started the event in 1993 to bolster self-confidence for adolescent girls, has teamed up with America Online for this year’s day, set for Thursday.
“We like to say the Ms. Foundation is sponsoring the event on Earth, and AOL is sponsoring it in space,” says Jill Savitt, communications director for the Ms. Foundation in New York. “We want to show girls that there is a place for them in the computer world, even though most of the toys and video games are aimed at boys.”
She estimates that about 5 million participated last year, by accompanying a parent or mentor to work and getting a firsthand look at the office routine.
With the addition of two World Wide Web sites on the Internet, this year’s campaign is offering girls, and boys, worldwide an unusual look into the working life of American women in a range of careers. “The idea is to expand the experience beyond the one-day thing,” explains Katherine Borsecnik, an AOL vice president. “At best, I think it will open young women’s eyes to opportunities for working in cyberspace, even if they aren’t computer experts.”
Because AOL, headquartered in Vienna, Va., is a high-tech company with lots of working mothers, she says, “we have a lot of grass-roots interest in the campaign.” AOL sponsors an in-house Take Our Daughters to Work Day program for its 2,000 employees, and an aggressive community outreach program for about 130 girls who might need mentors, she says. “But we also wanted to do something about providing consumer information online.”
AOL’s 5 million subscribers can call up the keyword “Daughters” and find a site where they can ask questions about various careers and corporations, read essays by career women, and participate in online chats with women in many occupations, from lawyer to opera singer.
The second site is sponsored by Global Network Navigator (GNN), the AOL service for Internet users only. At the Internet address of https://gnn.com/daughters, it contains background on the event, tools and instructions for creating Web home pages, interviews with women discussing career options, events, calendars and background.
At the Ms. Foundation, Savitt sees the collaboration as the logical next step for a program that has grown steadily. “It started with three women and a fax machine, and was just going to be for New York City,” she says. “Parade magazine ran a little blurb and they got 7,000 calls from around the country.”
She thinks the annual day is becoming institutionalized, despite the fact that it has been criticized for focusing on girls only. “This isn’t a career day, but an intervention in a critical moment in girls’ lives,” she says, citing research consistently showing that girls suffer a serious drop in self-esteem as they enter their teens.
“Boys have serious needs in their teenage years, too, but they are different. We don’t have the resources to deal with that--our mandate is to serve girls and women.”
A network of organizations is now working on a national day tailored for boys, Savitt says. Information about the project is available at (800) 973-8229.
