CAREERS: A South Asian twist to Take Your Daughter To Work Day

A post by Ruchika Tulshyan, at Columbia Graduate School of Journalism - rt2371[at]columbia.edu

Photos by Divrina Dhingra, at Columbia Graduate School of Journalism - divrina.d[at]gmail.com

This year's Take Your Daughters and Sons to Work Day, on Thursday, April 22, featured an unusual South Asian twist in NYC. The day, which gives children around the country a chance to visit workplaces and see their parents in a different light, can pose an issue for some South Asian families if the moms don't work.

So the South Asian Women's Leadership Forum (SAWLF) set up its own version of this, matching high school girls with women in top corporate companies like JP Morgan and HarperCollins. SAWLF paired 50 South Asian girls with women in senior management positions in Fortune 500 firms in New York. Many of the high school girls had never stepped into a corporate office before yesterday.

“It was an opportunity for high school girls to learn that they too can be like these intelligent and successful career women,” says Simi Ahuja, founder of SAWLF and managing director of SA & Associates. Having a South Asian female role model is essential to the development of many young girls, Ahuja added.

As these high school girls spent some time with professional career women, the hope is that they too will one day follow suit.

Did you take your sons or daughters to work? Do you think it was a useful exercise? Tell us in the comments.