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The Daughter Also Rises
| Article
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17719 |
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Section : |
LIFE
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| Issue
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6 / 1990 |
2,188 Words |
| Author
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Steven Kaplan
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The path for children interested in the family business used to be predictable: Daddy's young man took over the firm and Daddy's little girl got married. Most fathers hoped to add an "and son" to their names, but no self-respecting businessman would add and "add daughter." An late as the 1950s it was considered odd if a woman wanted to leave home or go to work at all. Maybe it was OK for the unmarried, but if a mother entered the working world it was deemed nothing short of scandalous.
Then came the revolution. Today's women, whether mothers or not, are much more a part of the work force. But while women have made inroads into the American workplace, they have been less successful in penetrating the bastions of the family business. Women seem to be able to convince potential bosses that they can do a good job, as long as those hiring aren't their fathers. The attitudes of daddies toward their little girls die hard.
Robbed By the Bank
Take the case of Jessica Wolfson (not her real name), whose father owns a bank in the Midwest. Although her brother was not the slightest bit interested in banking, Wolfson was fascinated. She began working in her father's bank at age thirteen, and by the time she was twenty knew literally every facet of the business. After graduating from college, she asked her father to give her a job and a title commensurate with her knowledge. Her father, though hesitant, finally granted her one: management trainee.
"I should have taught management trainees," Wolfson says, "not been one. I just circulated around the bank waiting for some movement at the top, because my father insisted he could not create a special position for me. I had to wait for somebody above me to leave.
"Finally, the opportunity I had been awaiting came along: the vice president in charge of marketing and lending quit. So I got excited. I'd spend more time in bookkeeping and proof than any management trainee on earth, and I knew virtually every operation of that bank.
"Then my father came to me. He was so excited that he could hardly contain himself. He said I've got the greatest idea. We're going to get your brother in to do this marketing job. He's worked on a magazine in Nebraska for the last six months, so you know he's going to be excellent at this.'
"I was stunned. I think the blood stopped in my veins. My brother had never worked a single day in the bank. I just couldn't believe what my father was saying. I turned from him, walked away, and said to myself, 'I think that' the rottenest idea I've ever heard in my life.'"
Wolfson's experience has been particularly negative, but her story, unfortunately, is not unusual. "Throughout human history," Louis B. Barnes of the Harvard Business School writes in Family Business Review, "parents have traditionally used hierarchy and primogeniture to set the rules for the younger generational succession…. Daughters seem to face the most complex challenges. They may find doubt and skepticism coming from both parents and siblings. Doubting fathers seem to give a daughter a much harder time …than they
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