It happens every April, just like death and taxes: Take Our Daughters to Work Day.  As a writer on  “The Mary Tyler Moore Show,” I was one of the new “career women,” writing about one of the new career women.  While my mother's generation thought being a secretary was a stepping stone to marrying the boss, my generation thought being a secretary was a stepping stone to being the boss; Mary set that standard. 

        If  “The Mary Tyler Moore Show,” hadn’t gone off the air, Mary would certainly have taken over Mr. Grant's job as news director by now - don't you think?  There was no glass ceiling at WJM, was there?  Say it isn't so! 

        Right after my MTM experience, I won an Emmy for writing on Lily Tomlin’s special.  More women won writing Emmys in 1974 than ever before in the history of the Television Academy.  With such an auspicious start, could equality have been far behind?  Apparently, yes.  A recent report released by the Writer’s Guild of America revealed that over the past quarter of a century there have been minimal gains for women writers.  In fact, statistically, the best year for women writers in Hollywood was 1949 (most were writing partnered with their husbands)!

      Today, a white woman in her peak earning years makes only 70 cents for every dollar earned by a man.  I call these “gyno dollars.”  So, why would a secretary take her daughter to work?  To show her that despite the media spin that tells the girl she can be all she can be, and fake appealing job titles like  “Executive Assistant,” offices are still configured in the missionary position – you know – men on top, women on the bottom.

        Maybe we should warn our daughters that someone is always trying to tell us we’ve come a long way, baby.  The truth is the national Anti-Affirmative Action Movement is making opportunities for women disappear faster than you can say John Ashcroft; and the media continues to describe this injustice as “ending preferences.”  Isn’t being a male a preference?

        Then there’s harassment.  Even the word is a mystery.  Is the accent on the “ha,” or the “ass?”  Ever since the Anita Hill Inquisition, we've been telling men that they just don't get it.  Now men are claiming they’re afraid if they so much as hold the elevator door open for us, we'll sue their pants off.

        Thirty years ago after feminist author Gloria Steinem remarked  “A woman needs a man like a fish needs a bicycle,” millions of women got divorced and started careers where the sky was the limit.  Could she have predicted that today an unmarried woman is five hundred times more likely to die in poverty than a married woman?  So, despite our ambitions, our mothers were right: the job of wife is still the best job most women can get.  Steinem wised up and got married last year. 

        So, this year on “Take Our Daughters to Work Day,” let's not show up for work at all!  Let's not even get out of bed.  Maybe it would benefit working women more if we just said no to gyno dollars and let the whole damn office, movie studio, restaurant, store, school, hospital or factory fall apart without us. 

        And after a day spent not taking our daughters to work, let’s get together on our porches and in our back yards and light up our barbecues and hibachis.  Once those fires are crackling, let’s forget about making dinner for the family.  Instead, let's re-enact an indelible moment from feminist folklore: let's take off our tops and toss our thick, petroleum-based, foam-filled push-up bras onto the flames!  Let them snap, crackle, and pollute!  Let a bonfire of the Wonderbras send out a toxic smoke signal that says: We're raising a stink because we want the financial equality we were promised years ago and we want it today!