Corporate 'camps' nurture girls' aspirations in the business world
By Maggie Jackson, Globe Correspondent, 4/11/04
They grimaced at paycheck calculations and groaned at the projected cash flow sheet. ''Can we just skip this?" Jacquelyn Andrews, 15, of Walpole, asked cheekily. For three teen girls huddled one recent Saturday over a business plan for a fictional sporting goods store, number-crunching was a hard sell.
But that's exactly why they and 14 other girls were spending a weekend at Camp CEO, one of a series of events created in the past year by the Boston-area Girl Scouts and local businesswomen to expose teen girls to the business world -- a career choice of little interest to most of them.
Teen girls envision themselves pursuing careers, but many see the business world as boring, stressful, and male-dominated, according to the Simmons College School of Management study that inspired the Scout initiatives. Girls associate business with math and finance, yet show less confidence than boys in these areas, reported the 2002 survey of 5,000 middle and high school students nationwide.
''Even though boys don't know much about business, they still perceive it as a place they would go as a career," says Gail Deegan, a retired publishing executive who is on the board of the Patriots' Trail Girl Scout Council and helped create Boston's Camp CEO. ''Girls really rank helping others and making the world a better place as key motivators in choosing careers -- and they don't see how business fits with that."
It's not hard to see the connection to the ''glass ceiling." Women received 41 percent of MBAs in 2002, up from 35 percent a decade earlier, but only eight companies in the Fortune 500 are headed by female chief executive officers.
''Where there's a massive gap is at the leadership level," says Fiona Wilson, a Simmons assistant professor and co-author of the study, published jointly with The Committee of 200, a businesswomen's group.
Can a business camp funnel more female talent to the top? Some hope so. Girls Inc., a national nonprofit for disadvantaged girls, is holding its second corporate camp in New York in July.
''Even one day or one week of exposure nurtures a girl's ability to dream," says Girls Inc. chief operating officer Marcia Brumit Kropf.
Last summer, the Patriots' Trail joined a handful of regional Girl Scout organizations in holding a Camp CEO, where girls learn from women executives. Last month's weekend at a Waltham Scout camp will be followed by a week-long camp in July. The camps are part of a new national program called ''From Badges to Business," in which girls earn badges and scholarships for business-related activities.
In Waltham, health care consultant Wendy Weitzner joined a half-dozen businesswomen shepherding the girls through business plans, career advice, and even an investing primer. She volunteered to show the girls that math can be creative and hopes that they will someday swell the ranks of business.
''I feel alone a lot of times in the business world," said Weitzner, of Needham. ''I want them to be able to feel there's a peer group and a support group."
Weitzner prodded one group to tally what their six store clerks would earn annually. ''We're going to be in debt for the first 10 years of our business!" yelped Emily Driscoll of Norwood, who was inspired to join the camp by an aunt in management.
Emily, 14, isn't settled on a career plan, but halfway through the camp, she sounded like a convert. More women should be ''running things" in business, she asserted, braces glinting. ''Women are more organized. They have a different point of view."
Maggie Jackson's Balancing Acts column appears every other week. She can be reached at .
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