About Families Online

Feature Articles for April 2003

Ms. Foundation for Women launches Take Our Daughters And Sons To WorkSM to expand opportunities for girls and boys

On Thursday, April 24, 2003, the Ms. Foundation for Women will launch Take Our Daughters And Sons To WorkSM to broaden the conversation about the competing challenges of work and family, and help create a future in which girls and boys can participate fully in family, work and community.

“Ten years of organizing Take Our Daughters To Work® Day has shown girls the wealth of opportunities available to them, but it isn’t enough,” said Marie C. Wilson, President of the Ms. Foundation for Women. “For girls to take full advantage of the opportunities the program helped to create, boys’ lives must change as well. That’s what our nation’s daughters and sons want and expect.”

According to a national study conducted by the Families and Work Institute, girls and boys envision a future in which they are actively involved in all aspects of their lives. In fact, 81 percent of girls and almost 60 percent of boys said they will reduce their work hours when they have children.

But for their expectations to be realized there needs to be a shift in how we integrate and share work and family responsibilities. Men who participated in Take Our Daughters To Work® Day expressed their gratitude because the program gave them their first opportunity to be a “public father” in the workplace. In fact, 40 percent of the adults who took girls to work on that Day were men. Often men report that if they leave early for a parent-teacher conference or to care for an ailing relative, the unspoken rules of the workplace assume work is not their top priority.

Men’s stories echo what working women have been saying for decades—taking an active care-giving role in your family life can limit your job possibilities and chances for advancement.

“Take Our Daughters And Sons To WorkSM will ask the nation to reexamine those assumptions so our daughters and sons can be involved in both their family and work lives without the pressures of societal constraints or judgments,” continued Wilson.

The new program will also continue to educate girls and boys about the wealth of job possibilities for their future, teach them about the realities of work, and give them a glimpse of what the adults in their lives do during the day.

Take Our Daughters And Sons To WorkSM will encourage girls and boys to share their ideas and expectations about the workplace of the future with the companies that will someday employ them. Specific activities have been designed to help girls and boys begin to articulate their ideas about having both a job and a family.

More information about the program is available online at www.DaughtersandSonstoWork.org, including the workplace activities, planning tips, sample days and other suggestions to help workplaces plan a successful Day. In addition, the Ms. Foundation has a full time staff organizer to provide assistance and advise companies on their plans for April 24.