Girls rule today at Ohio State. The university is hosting Take Your Daughter To Work Day, a chance for OSU faculty students and staff to bring their daughters to work to offer them a glimpse of their jobs.
The event also allows girls to attend career exploration workshops and witness women in professional working environments. Empowerment workshops are offered to boost the girls’ self image and confidence.
“We aspire to do a lot of things for the girls,” said Margie Bogenshutz, director of undergraduate internship services for the Fisher College of Business and committee member for the event. “Especially to provide strong women role models.”
All of the workshops are led by women.
Take Your Daughter To Work Day started as a national event 11 years ago, founded by the Ms. Foundation. The organization conducted research at the time showing significant inequalities between boys and girls in the classroom. The Ms. Foundation was worried by the findings and created the event as a way to expose girls around the country to career options they could pursue in the future.
“The event began nine years ago at OSU with the initial idea to expand on the same concept,” Bogenshutz said. “It started out with really three or four people who wanted to get the event going here.”
Two organizations, the University Career Services Committee and the Association of Faculty and Professional Women, are credited with starting the event at OSU. They, too, were concerned by the Ms. Foundation findings.
Becky Wilkins, director of the OSU Child Care Center and committee member, has been involved with the event since its first years.
“We felt at the time there were a lot of opportunities girls weren’t involved in,” she said.
Take Your Daughter to Work Day, which is planned solely by a volunteer committee, has grown dramatically each year. Last year, there were 400 participants – 440 have already registered this year.
Although boys may attend the event, the focus remains largely on girls.
“Last year only about a dozen boys attended. It’s really an opportunity for girls to be together, without boys, to explore freely,” Bogenshutz said.
Some of the events include a visit to the OSU Chimpanzee Center, a popular workshop for several years, and a visit to the Don Scott Animal Facilities to see horses and help girls to understand animal science. Many events focus on introducing girls to more male-dominated fields, such as the sciences, mathematics and law enforcement.
Lisa Abrams, director of women in engineering programming, is presenting a workshop called “Invention by Designs” which will give participants an opportunity to design a camera and then take part in a design competition.
“Students between 12-16 will be participating in my workshop,” Abrams said. “We can start encouraging them to explore this as a career or a college major.”
CABS provides transportation to the off-campus workshops, and the residence halls provide free lunches for girls as a goodwill gesture, Bogenshutz said. The Ohio Union also offered a discounted price on the use of its facilities for the keynote speech in the morning.
“It’s really so many parts of the university coming together,” Bogenshutz said.
The biggest expense in the past was printing the workshop booklets. This year all of the information is provided online, as with registrations for the day’s activities.
