Thursday, April 23, 1998 | 10:21 a.m.
There's no reason a girl can't grow up to be firefighter -- unless she insists on teetering around in platform shoes.
That's what 12-year-old Maddie Cohan discovered last year when she attended a demonstration by several of the valley's female firefighters -- part of a program offered each year by the City of Las Vegas in honor of national Take Our Daughters to Work Day.
"We had to walk a lot," Maddie says. "I wore the wrong kind of shoes and my feet hurt."
Today, Maddie left those shoes at home, and, along with her 13-year-old sister, Rochelle, and nearly 200 other girls, returned to City Hall for this year's program, which included a breakfast, talks with female chemists, engineers and building inspectors, and lunch with Mayor Jan Jones.
"The idea is to expose the girls to different jobs so they're not limited in their thinking," says Maria Castillo-Couch, senior personnel analyst for the city, who has organized the program since its inception. "They're dazzled by the opportunity to learn about all the different careers."
This was precisely the objective the Ms. Foundation for Women had in mind six years ago, when it created national Take Our Daughters To Work Day, says Melissa Silverstein, chief of staff for the non-profit organization. The idea was inspired by several studies, including one commissioned by the American Association of University Women (AAUW), which showed that girls suffer a pronounced loss of self-esteem at the onset of adolescence and are often diverted from their studies and career aspirations, Silverstein says.
"This is an age where the girls you've seen out in the playground running and jumping around and playing sports wind up hanging around the bathroom all day, brushing their hair," she says. "Something happens: It's about roles in society."
In an attempt to divert girls from the myriad distractions of adolescence and get them to focus on their increasingly bright array of career opportunities, the Ms. Foundation for Women established the day with the recommendation that companies extend invitations to girls only, ideally those between the ages of 9 and 15, Silverstein says. "This is the age when girls really need intervention," she says. "This is a day for girls to be valued for their skills and intellect, rather than for their appearance."
Yet while few would argue against the value of bolstering girls' self-esteem and career aspirations, controversy persists over the event's exclusion of boys.
In a recent interview with the Minneapolis-St. Paul Star Tribune, Christina Hoff Sommers of the American Enterprise Institute took aim at the Ms. Foundation for Women and its reported suggestion two years ago that boys spend Take Our Daughters To Work Day grocery shopping or spending time at a shelter for abused women. Hoff Sommers called it "just more ways to make our boys feel ashamed." (The recommendation was later withdrawn.)
"We've gone a long way toward addressing girls' special needs and done next to nothing for boys," Hoff Sommers told the Star Tribune. "I think boys need the same opportunity and balance in their lives," agrees Kirby Burgess, director of Clark County Family and Youth Services.
"Even though the world has changed a lot, I still think there's a lot more temptation and peer pressure on boys."
Statistically, boys earn lower grades, are more likely to be held back or drop out of school. And while incarceration rates among girls are rising, they remain much higher for boys, Burgess says.
Many boys also lack the ability to prepare themselves for the workplace, says Mujahid Ramadan, executive director of Nevada Partners, a nonprofit, private sector human development organization focused on employment preparation. While counseling kids, Ramadan encounters countless boys who dream of becoming the next Michael Jordan. "Consistently they say, 'I want to be a basketball player,' " Ramadan says. "Many students at that age are sensory-bound: whatever comes into their sensory space, they want to be.
"We need to be able to introduce them to the work force."
Nevada Partners and several other community groups such as the Boy Scouts of America, offer various programs and events in an effort to do that. But so far, no event exists for boys on the scale of Take Our Daughters to Work Day, which Silverstein estimates is observed by one-third of American companies.
"I think we would all do well if we said, 'Let's let the boys see whatever the girls are seeing in the workplace, at the same age,' " Ramadan says. "The sooner we're introduced to the workplace, the quicker we adjust to it."
Boys join in
In recognition of this fact, a few companies and municipalities throughout the country have chosen to modify Take Our Daughters To Work Day by allowing boys to participate.
At the Clark County Government Center, for example, employees are invited to bring their kids, regardless of their gender, to show them their office and treat them to a hot dog roast in the outdoor amphitheater. Though the Ms. Foundation for Women suggests the day target 9- to -15-year-olds, the county has few age restrictions, says Oly Embry, executive assistant in human resources. "We just ask that they use their own discretion."
This year, as in years past, Abbi Silver, chief deputy district attorney in Clark County for the State of Nevada, brought her niece, Pamela, of whom she has legal guardianship.
"It's a very nice work environment when the children come," says Silver, adding that boys should also be included. "It's just helpful for any child -- boy or girl -- to watch their parent or caretaker at work. It gives them a whole other point of view."
Pamela, who often helps Silver out in the office or in court on weekends and during the summer, finds the work interesting. But she's not preparing for law school just yet. "I don't think I would ever want to do it," Pamela says. "It puts a lot of stress on (Silver's) shoulders, I can see that." Instead, Pamela plans to work with mentally and physically handicapped children.
"She really helps me," Silver says of her niece. "(But) she's very, very good with children, so I could see her doing something in the teaching arena."
UNLV has also been flexible about Take Our Daughters To Work Day, according to Sue Moore, who arranged to have her 13-year-old daughter, Heather, an aspiring vulcanologist, follow a professor of geoscience around for the day. "It gives them the chance to see past the glorified vision that they may have gotten from Hollywood," Moore says of the event. "It just gives them a good three-dimensional perspective."
Daughters only
Unlike the county and the university, however, the City of Las Vegas has chosen to follow the original premise for the day.
Boys are not invited to the program, says Castillo-Couch, who emphasizes that she is espousing the city's official policy, and not necessarily her own views. Still, she adds:
"It really diffuses it if you bring in the boys,"
This stance reflects that of the American Association of University Women.
"This was conceived of as an opportunity to give girls the exposure to the workplace they need," says April Osajima, associate director for programs at the American Association of University Women in Washington, D.C. "Our own research shows that girls are traditionally not encouraged to enter certain types of fields, particularly math- and science-related occupations, and this is an opportunity to address that."
Noting that women's average annual earnings remain at 74 cents to every dollar of men's earnings, Osajima adds: "This indicates we still have far to go in terms of women's equity in the workplace. And bringing girls into the workplace and exposing them to the wide range of opportunities that they have available to them is still a really important activity."
Rochelle Cohan, for one, believes this to be true. "I think it's good that it's a day just for us," she says.
"It shows that if you work hard, you can be something."
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