Take Our Daughters (and Sons) to Work Day

This past Thursday, April 28th, was the 19th anniversary of Take Our Daughters to Work Day! When I was a kid, my dad worked in a lab that had a pretty strict “no kids” policy, so one year he brought his work to my classroom. As far as I recall, this involved making some sort of a tornado in a blender, but we thought it was awesome. Also, he worked as a chemist on formulating laxatives, so if you can convince a bunch of kids that that is interesting, I suspect you can convince them of anything.

My two younger sisters lucked out, though, because he later moved to a company that sponsored a big old party for Take Our Daughters to Work – they got to walk around in lab coats and safety goggles, and were allowed to “make their own” lip balm with the help of some friendly lab techs. This company, like many, actually titled their celebration “Take Our Children to Work Day,” and the celebrants included children of all genders.

(Lest you think I have forgotten someone, my mom works in a medical profession which, also, is not really conducive to bringing children around because of safety and patient confidentiality. However, she always talked about her work with us, and we were often invited to visit “her office” – the area of our dining room that she staked off to finish paperwork in the evenings.)

Last week, I saw an internet banner for “Take Our Daughters and Sons to Work Day,” and upon further research learned that the celebration is a pretty recent event (since 1993). I didn’t know, however, that Take Our Kids to Work was originally promoted by the Ms. Foundation and Gloria Steinem as a day to promote girls’ self-esteem and expose them to a variety of career paths. The event quickly became popular thanks to literature distributed through schools and the enthusiasm of workplaces, although many always celebrated the event as gender-neutral (like my Dad’s office).

In 2003, the name was officially amended to reflect the inclusion of boys, and the Ms. Foundation stated that although the original event was meant to specifically give girls a boost, including boys would allow children to explore careers at a time when they were young and still thinking flexibly about gender roles. Also, the Ms. Foundation proposed that the participation of adult men helped combat gender stereotypes by putting them in a parental role in the workplace, if only for a day.

So, here’s to the success of children, and to showing them all of the options that await them. Congratulations to the Ms. Foundation for an awesome 19 years.