Girls’ Day Out
Thirty high school students from the Fulfillment Fund scholarship program went shopping Thursday at Century City Shopping Center--not for shoes or clothes but for the mall itself in a real estate exercise. The girls toured the mall (which isn’t actually for sale), examined store construction, debated the right tenant mix and delved into due diligence.
Callers to Virgin Interactive were greeted by some surprisingly youthful voices as girls took turns answering phones at the Irvine headquarters of the video and computer game maker.
“I’m going to work here. I want to do what my mom’s doing,” declared Jenna Lamoureux, 10, a fourth-grader at Taft Elementary School in Santa Ana, who was helping her receptionist mother Joanne with a crisp, “Good morning, Virgin Interactive.”
Girls took over the world Thursday, or so it seemed at some companies as millions of girls, and a number of boys, marched into offices, factories, hospitals, hotels, construction sites and even the White House during the fifth annual Take Our Daughters to Work Day, created by the Ms. Foundation for Women to boost the self-esteem and job prospects of young women.
The turnout and media attention grows every year for the day, which has become an institution at workplaces throughout the country. It’s also something of a cultural touchstone, with what-about-the-boys? anxieties pushing some companies to call their efforts “Career Day” or “Take Our Children to Work Day.”
A New York garment workers union staged a version called “Don’t Bring Our Daughters to Work Day” to dramatize the problem of child labor in New York garment factories.
The Ms. Foundation, which addresses the boys with a curriculum for those left behind in the classroom, took the occasion of the fifth anniversary of the day to reemphasize the girls. The New York-based foundation started the daughters day in 1993.
“Having girls introduced to the reality of work is important,” said Marie C. Wilson, president of the Ms. Foundation.
“Boys have real issues,” Wilson said. “It’s a conversation that we’re not having in America about what’s going to happen to the jobs that men have. There’s a fear that there’s not going to be enough work.”
“But instead of talking about creating more work, they’re saying, ‘What about the boys?’ ” Wilson said. “What they’re really saying is, ‘Will there be work for my son?’ ”
San Francisco-based Chevron Corp. handles the controversy by alternating Daughters Day with Sons Day, after an overwhelming response in 1994 when the oil company opened the day to girls and boys, spokeswoman Marla Lee said.
This year, more than 800 girls visited 11 Chevron offices nationwide, trying on safety equipment, making nylon in a test tube and learning how computer-generated maps help the company search for oil, Lee said.
More than 80 daughters visiting eight Los Angeles County Public Defenders offices spent some long minutes in a lock-up, visited a jury trial, heard a lecture on the importance of jury service and met with female lawyers and investigators before tackling small jobs entering computer data, filing and doing research. A separate Sons Day is held in the summer.
The pretend purchase of Century City Shopping Center was put together by a professional organization called Commercial Real Estate Women of Los Angeles in place of the group’s annual fashion show, said board member Deborah S. Schmidt, a lawyer with Appel & Associates in Century City.
El Camino High School senior Chanel Henderson said she found the purchasing exercise useful because she wants to be an entrepreneur, perhaps running her own store.
At IBM’s Costa Mesa offices, children learned how to set up a World Wide Web site.
At Deloitte & Touche’s Costa Mesa office, 25 girls held a teleconference with daughters of employees at the firm’s Chicago office.
They played a game: five questions to guess what job each wants when she grows up. The Chicago girls figured out exactly what Alexandra Lindstrom, 9, of Laguna Beach wants to become: president of the United States.
The girls got rundowns on the firm’s accounting and consulting services and filled out federal income tax forms--an experience they described as boring.
Alexandra was even prompted to ask why people have to pay taxes.
“So they got the point,” Deloitte spokeswoman Kathleen Reagan said.
Courtney Montgomery, 15, of Costa Mesa, said it was good to see where her mother works. But she added that she’s heading in a different direction than Deloitte.
“I have my heart set on being a musician,” Courtney said. “Singing on a street corner.”
Times staff writer E. Scott Reckard contributed to this report.
