\u201cMom, I think I\u2019d like to be a photographer,\u201d my 10-year-old daughter, Maya, said recently.<\/p>\n
\u201cThat would be very cool.\u201d\u00a0 Inside, I found myself thinking: I hope you can earn a living doing that.<\/p>\n
Don\u2019t get me wrong.\u00a0 I\u2019m a believer in the arts.\u00a0 I sang in a high school show choir before Glee<\/em> made that seem cool.\u00a0 I worked backstage on all of my high school\u2019s plays and minored in theatre at Muskingum College just because I loved it.<\/p>\n In fact, maybe because I know I have a bias toward the arts and humanities, I worry about how to correct for that.\u00a0 I also know very well the barriers women face in entering the male-dominated\u2014and lucrative\u2014STEM fields.\u00a0 I love sharing blog space with Science Grrl<\/a>, Veronica Arreola, and I definitely gain insights from her posts.\u00a0 I want to try to expose Maya to those potential career paths, too.<\/p>\n But the National Women’s Studies Association\u2019s annual conference<\/a> in Atlanta, Georgia last week gave me a new way to think about the transformative potential of the arts.<\/p>\n I listed to Lisa Yun Lee, the director of the Jane Addams Hull House<\/a> museum, talk about why she makes efforts to support the arts with her programs.\u00a0 She explained that her immigrant mother\u2014who she knew as an accountant\u2014had wanted to be a poet, a calling she gave up when she came to the United States.<\/p>\n