Yesterday was Take Our Daughters to Work Day throughout the country. Or, as it was renamed just this year, Take Our Daughters and Sons to Work Day.
Back in 1993, the Ms. Foundation established Take Our Daughters to Work Day to encourage women to enter the work force.
Since its inception, the day has become worthless and futile in two significant ways. The sudden addition of "and Sons" completely reverses the original concept, and instead of taking daughters to work, some moms bring them right back home.
Stay-at-home moms (the current PC term) began keeping their daughters home so they could see that Mommy worked too, even though she didn't go to work. I respect stay-at-home moms, but this is a point of contention with me.
I don't think stay-at-home moms are lazy or don't contribute to society. It is simply that daughters already know what their mothers do at home because they are often there to see them do it. Not only is there an entire summer vacation, there are also weekends, holidays, mornings before school and countless evenings after school.
Ask children who do the dishes; they will most likely tell you, "Mommy does." In general, the same answer applies to who drives them to piano lessons and who buys the groceries.
A study done by the University of Michigan's Institute for Social Research in 2002 found that American men do about 16 hours of housework per week whereas women do about 27 hours.
Kids know their mothers do more housework because they see them do it. Why reiterate what daughters already know? The point of the day is to broaden horizons. If Mommy doesn't work, send the girl to Daddy's office.
On to the "and Sons" amendment tacked on this year. This is such a blatantly stupid move on behalf of Ms. Foundation that members might as well abandon the whole thing, start putting lipstick ads in Ms. magazine and take their husbands' names.
They may be encouraging sons to go to their mothers' work and see that women work just as men do, but the day was initiated and exclusively devoted to get our daughters into the work place.
For once, it was meant as a special day entirely devoted to little girls. It was meant to show, in the clearest terms possible, that they have numerous options available to them.
Once the day becomes indiscriminate, the whole dynamic changes. It is no longer about helping daughters specifically because they still need it. Instead, it is just another activity for children.
There is nothing wrong with teaching all children about the work place. However, the program was established because women continue to be unequal in many ways in the work force. The U.S. Census Bureau reported in 2001 that 61 percent of women 16 and older have a job, as opposed to 74 percent of men.
In male-dominated fields like engineering and mathematics, women comprise only 20 percent of the work force.
Women still receive lesser pay for the same work. A woman can expect to receive about 73 cents for every man's dollar. And that's for white women. A black woman can expect about 90 cents to every black man's dollar. That may sound better at first, but consider that black men earn marginally less than white men.
A persistent glass ceiling still keeps women out of the highest levels of administration in business and government. According to the United Nations' The World's Women 2000, in 1999, only 11 percent of corporate officers in the 500 largest U.S. corporations were women.
Given all these factors, programs like Take Our Daughters to Work Day continue to have great importance for the American society. Young women need the encouragement this program was built to give them.
Boys do not receive the same subtle hints of inferiority that girls receive daily. They are not told their basketball games are less interesting because they can't dunk. Boys are not discouraged from taking difficult mathematics courses in high school because boys are not as good at math as girls are. They do not consistently receive lower scores on the SATs and ACTs because the questions are geared toward girls.
Girls, however, receive such hints throughout their youth. Programs like Take Our Daughters to Work Day barely begin to scratch the surface of the issues that need remedying for the country's daughters. Including "and sons" in the day has undone a lot of positive potential it once had.
Sons have their day 365 days a year. Can't there be one day a year for our daughters?
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Kym Levesque is a journalism junior. Reach her at kymberly.levesque@asu.edu.
