In the Beginning, It Was Take Our Daughters

When I was young and it was summer, I used to go with my mom to work on a regular basis. She worked at a recreation center where I would sit at an extra desk, draw pictures, and once in a while venture down the hall to watch the girls do flip-flops on the balance beam in gymnastics class. Later, when she ran a tennis pro shop at a country club, she’d dress me in little tennis dresses off the clearance rack and I’d run around with the club members’ kids. I loved every minute of it, just being able to see how my mom spent her time and interacted in a professional setting. In 1993, the Ms. Foundation took that idea to the next level and launched “Take Our Daughters to Work” day, and encouraged workplaces to develop their own programs. The purpose of this fourth Thursday in April was to expose kids to what adults did all day at work, remind them of the value of education, and give them a chance to experience what work might look like for them in the future.

In 1996, I worked at Stanford University, and it was decided through the Feminist Studies department, the Institute for Research on Women and Gender and the Work-Life Center, that both daughters and sons should attend. In 2003, the Ms. Foundation agreed. There was a university-wide call for volunteers, and though I was twenty-three years old, and nowhere near having a daughter or son, I was drawn to the cause. A part of me was searching for community in working in such a large environment, another part of me wanted to take the prize for developing their logo for the event that year, but deep down, I knew that exposing kids to what their parents or adults in their lives did all day was an important exchange.

We met on a regular basis to discuss the program, which included an opening ceremony with balloons and a speech, juice, coffee, and morning pastries, and then time spent back in the office with the grown-ups. I designed a logo that illustrated the Mission-style architecture of Stanford’s buildings with the towering palm trees that lined their infamous Palm Drive. It seemed to me that this event was on the forefront of empowering our young boys and girls—letting them know that in this country they really could do whatever they wanted when they grew up, as long as they put their minds to it. The talk and messages received from the adults around them that morning reiterated that.