In 1993, feminist Gloria Steinem and the Ms. Foundation for Women came up with the first Take Our Daughters to Work Day, an educational program that involved parents inviting their young daughters to spend the final Thursday of April at the parents’ workplace.
The ostensible aim of the program was to boost the young girls’ self-esteem and regard for their abilities by exposing them to a variety of occupations, including many traditionally dominated by the male of the species. Skeptics at the time suggested, however, that the event could more accurately be described as amounting to official approval for little girl persons to skip school for a day, while depriving little boy persons of the same opportunity.
Arguing that the self-esteem issues that the program addressed were specific to girls, the Ms. Foundation resisted pressure from educators and parents to include boys. Wikipedia cites Christina Hoff-Sommers in her book “The War Against Boys” in reporting that an early proposal by the Ms. Foundation to include boys was Son’s Day, to take place on a Sunday so boys would avoid missing a day of school. (See equal rights for school-skippers, above.) The program would have required boys to stay at home on their day to do cleaning and cooking and have their consciousness raised about topics such as sexism and violence against women.
That dog didn’t hunt. Ten years after its founding, Take Our Daughters to Work Day morphed into Take Our Daughters and Sons to Work Day. One small step for man. One giant leap for personkind.
I have no idea how many school districts and businesses might have participated in the annual take-the-kids-to-work event on Thursday. But according to the morning newspaper, a related happening — the seventh annual Totally Trades conference for County girls in grades eight through 12 — was held on Wednesday at Presque Isle’s Northern Maine Community College and reportedly went well.
Designed to expose young girls to occupations traditionally the near-exclusive province of males, the hands-on conference featured workshop sessions ranging from heavy construction and carpentry to welding and metal fabrication. More than one teenager likely returned home with a newly acquired interest in eventually pursuing a career in a field long perceived as “man’s work.”
If so, well, good on them, as my friends just over the hill in nearby Canada might say. And good, as well, on the program’s sponsors and the Central Aroostook Office of Women, Work and Community, organizer of the event, for sparking that interest. If there is one thing society has learned in the past half-century it is that, given half a chance, women can handle just about any job a man can — short, perhaps, of playing middle linebacker for the Green Bay Packers, although I’ve known a few females who might make an impressive run at that profession, as well.
Nearly 20 years ago, then Secretary of Defense Les Aspin ordered the armed services to drop restrictions on women flying combat missions and serving aboard Navy ships. And well he should have. I remember thinking at the time that if female pilots possess the Right Stuff they should be flying Air Force and Navy fighter jets in combat or piloting the Army’s attack helicopters alongside their male buddies who also qualify for the job.
As well, if the lady GIs have the skill to drop a mortar round on an enemy bunker or knock out a hostile tank with whatever today’s choice of weapon for that purpose might be, they ought to be allowed to do that, too. It matters not to the target whether the hand that launches the ordnance is masculine paw or well-manicured digit — the result is the same in either case.
There is a reason nowadays that you rarely see those condescending newspaper stories or television features about the first woman cop on the beat, the first female long-haul truck driver, heart surgeon, lawyer, mule skinner, Fortune 500 tycoon, skidder operator or bank robber.
In today’s relatively enlightened age, the newsworthiness of these things, if ever it was there in the first place, has gone the way of the 5-cent cigar and Elvis’ blue suede shoes. In matters concerning the expansion of women’s horizons we’ve come a long way, baby. And high time, too.
BDN columnist Kent Ward lives in Limestone. His email address is maineolddawg@gmail.com.