
                         Roanoke Times
                 Copyright (c) 1995, Landmark Communications, Inc.

DATE: FRIDAY, March 17, 1995                   TAG: 9503180045
SECTION: EDITORIAL                    PAGE: A-16   EDITION: METRO 
SOURCE: 
DATELINE:                                 LENGTH: Medium

DAUGHTERS DAY

A JUNIOR version of the affirmative-action debate is starting to stir as next month's Take Our Daughters to Work Day comes around for the third time since it was organized by the Ms. Foundation for Women.

This positive (i.e. affirmative) event to boost girls' career aspirations has created some controversy. Of course. Delicate sensibilities have been raised throughout society about reverse discrimination, so naturally the question arises: If we do this for our daughters, how can we exclude our sons?

Which should lead to the next question, which should not be: "Are the girls getting something the boys aren't?" It should be: "Are the boys being denied something they need?" Do American boys, as a class, start deferring to girls when they reach adolescence? When they think about careers, do most boys consider only a handful seen as suitable for men which, coincidentally, are not the top-paying professions, or do they pick more often according to their abilities and interests?

Exceptions can be found to any generalization, and the numbers of exceptions are fortunately increasing sharply. Still, most boys do not have as pressing a need as girls have to see role models of their gender in the workplace, so as to broaden a field of possibilities that in the past has been narrowed by gender stereotyping.

Which is not to say that boys wouldn't benefit from seeing women in the workplace. Or wouldn't like to see, or benefit from seeing, where Mom - or Dad - works.

By all means, welcome the guys, too. The question is: at the same time, with the girls? Parallel experiences with the program at BP Oil, reported in The Wall Street Journal, illustrate a possible problem.

The company's Houston office added boys to the program last year, the Journal reports, and when the youngsters were shown into a room for a teleconference with other participating offices, the boys rushed in, grabbed the front seats and the controls and took over. The girls hung back. At the Cleveland office, "where only girls were invited, most enthusiastically took part."

Society dismisses much questionable male behavior with a "boys-will-be-boys" shrug. Well, girls will be girls. If they need a little extra nurturing and role-modeling to realize their potential, it would benefit all of society if they at least on some occasions got it.

by CNB