The Subversive Nature of Female Scouting
“The girls themselves negotiated and shaped the movement that became Guiding long before male and female leaders drafted the official guidelines”
Although designed exclusively for boys (in line with the policies of the time, which did not envision future female leaders), Scouting attracted both boys and girls.
The legendary story is well known: at the First Scout Rally of 1909, a group of girls showed up calling themselves “Girl Scouts,” in uniform and everything. A little further on we will see that although we don’t know whether this story is true, it is completely irrelevant. Although Baden-Powell is acclaimed as the founder of Guiding, he himself always insisted that Guiding began on its own.
This article briefly argues that:
- Female Scouting has always been a disruptor
- This has benefited the Movement as a whole
- It has flexibly adapted to and reflected the changing gender norms and performances over time and across countries
Scouting Was Designed for Boys
Baden-Powell created Scouting as a response to the widespread perception that the youth of Edwardian Britain was going soft, losing values, and becoming useless to the nation. He devised a concept (which later became a Movement) to teach self-discipline, self-improvement, and problem-solving through a range of activities including survival skills and camping.
Scouting practices were largely inspired by existing ideas that linked nationhood with nature, fitness, and physical strength. In fact, the motivation for Scouting was largely driven by fears about the future of the British nation and empire being left in the hands of an “idle” and “sickly” next generation of boys and men.
This ideal Scout citizen would be patriotic, strong (physically and mentally), loyal, honest, trustworthy, competent in outdoor knowledge, and useful to the community. The “model” Scout citizen was also unmistakably masculine. Many of the movement’s roots rest on a “masculine ideal of the strong body,” and Baden-Powell sought to create a space where men and boys from different backgrounds could build a male community tied to ideas of patriotism, patriarchy, and empire.
What B-P did not expect was that this would appeal to girls.
Girls Took Matters Into Their Own Hands
At the start, to be a Scout you only needed to read Scouting for Boys, form a patrol, make your promise, and that was it. Thousands of girls did exactly that and went unnoticed in the Movement’s early years. By 1909, more than 6,000 girls had registered as Scouts with the National Office and were doing the same activities and following the same Programme as the boys — sometimes together, usually separately.
In many cases, girls obtained or borrowed a copy of Scouting for Boys from male relatives and were captivated by the promises of adventure and fun it contained. Girl Scouts organized themselves into small troops of female friends and relatives, or joined boys to create mixed troops:
“We just dressed up, pulled our stockings up over our knees, collected all the broomsticks we could find in the broom cupboard and went to the Scout shop and bought hats, which in those days you could do. They didn’t ask who we were or anything about it. It was a mixed patrol, we had two small boys, I think four small girls… and we did Scouting.”
One membership card shows a girl’s registration where the word “Boy” was simply crossed out and “Girl” written in by hand. Done. This simple act reflected the reality on the ground far better than any official report — and can be seen as a first act of appropriation of a Movement that inspired both men and women.
The 1909 Rally
The Rally was held at Crystal Palace. The girls showed up and people took notice.
“It was a Scout Rally and, of course, since we called ourselves scouts, we thought all scouts were boys and girls, mixed. But then we discovered they weren’t, they were all boys… And then B-P himself came up to us and said, ‘What are you doing here? Who are you?’ We said, ‘Please, sir, we are the Girl Scouts,’ and he said, ‘I’ve never heard of you. Anyway, you’d better come and join in,’ which of course pleased us very much.”
And so the disruptive, out-of-place presence of the Girl Scouts became visible, and they were inspected like all the other Scouts present.
(Almost) Everyone Against B-P
After Crystal Palace, public debate about Girl Scouts intensified. A weeks-long media debate in December 1909 was sparked by a letter of protest about girls going out late at night and “roaming the countryside with a stick.” Editorial and public opinion was divided — ranging from those who felt “it is better for a girl to become a ‘tomboy’ than an idle doll of poor morals,” to those who condemned the trend: “Is it not a sign of the anxious times if the mothers of girls… lack sufficient control to prevent their daughters from participating in something they disapprove of, especially something as eminently unsuitable as Scouting for girls?”
The Girl Guides Are Created
A quick solution came from the Association Secretary, who stated that although it might appear girls were part of the Movement, this was not the case (despite 6,000 being registered), and that a parallel scheme was already being designed exclusively for them.
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B-P tasked his sister Agnes with adapting Scouting for Boys for the Guides. She took charge of organizing everything, founding the Girl Guides in 1910, until Olave Baden-Powell arrived in 1918 and displaced her.
Agnes stated: “This organization, while on parallel lines to that of the Boy Scouts, differs in its aims and details. Whereas the teaching of the Boy Scouts develops manliness, that of the Girl Guides fosters femininity — in both cases through means that appeal to the young people themselves.”
A “Symmetrical Opposite”
The original Guides programme did not differ greatly from the official Scout programme — mainly because there was no other option; they ultimately used the same materials and publications.
In general, popular opinion at the time was opposed to young girls undertaking the same tests and skills as boys, which is why Agnes Baden-Powell chose to write a pamphlet promoting a suitable option for girls, centered on two themes: domestic skills and a kind of practical feminism that included physical development, survival skills and camping, civic education, and life education.
Agnes’s conservative gender perspective — which might now be interpreted as counterproductive — largely calmed anxieties about the expression of femininity, was formative for the nascent movement, and continued, though in different forms, throughout its history. In a very simple way, it allowed the construction of a space in which girls and young women could develop activities that anywhere else would be frowned upon or outright prohibited.
In 1909, Agnes and Robert jointly published two booklets: “Pamphlet A: Baden-Powell Girl Guides, a Suggestion for Character Training for Girls” and “Pamphlet B: Baden-Powell Girl Guides, a Suggestion for Character Training for Girls.” These were later expanded into a Handbook published in 1912 as “The Handbook for the Girl Guides or How Girls Can Help to Build Up the Empire.”
From my perspective, these publications are far superior to Scouting for Boys — clear, concise, allowing each girl to define her own path and open to everything new. Excellent works, yet almost unknown in the male Scout world.
The Second Wave
One could argue that Guiding (and Female Scouting in general) has managed to continue attracting generations of girls and young women because it has flexibly adapted to and reflected changing gender norms across time and place.
Several authors (Mills, Halls) have analyzed Guide and Girl Scout activities produced throughout history in response to varying levels of interest. First subtly and then openly, the major global issues of the day entered the Scout Programme through women — through their manuals and their activities — not through men.
As the struggle for women’s rights and children’s rights achieved victories around the world, these themes almost immediately permeated the female Programme. The right to vote and be elected brought the entire theme of democracy into the curriculum; rights to education incorporated vocational guidance and how to use your leadership as a Scout; the right to work sparked the most successful youth entrepreneurship programme in the world — the Girl Scout cookies.
The second wave concluded between 1975 and 1990 with two major milestones: the merger of Guide and Scout organizations (the SAGNOs), and the admission of women into previously all-male organizations.
In Mexico, women initially played a supporting role — unrecognized but effective. It was not until 1942 that the first female Cub leader was officially named: Beatriz Pérez Lebrija.
For a long time, we were lulled into believing that women were part of Scouting through the Guides, and that this sister organization adequately met their expectations. That peace of mind did not last long. Stories, legends, and rumors tell of the steady, low-intensity but high-impact incursion of women into ASMAC. By the 1970s, many groups were already running parallel female sections. A commission was formed to study the matter, and after much debate and the occasional outburst from a leader or two, women were admitted to ASMAC in 1981.
In terms of the Scout Programme, this was a revolution whose true value we have still not fully appreciated. It opened a new world in human development, stages of personal growth, new ways of living together, new tools, and new horizons.
It must be acknowledged that the initial work was very good. It was not a simple translation of the masculine into the feminine, but rather a fascinating creative process — including the (very obvious) recognition that girls pick things up faster than boys and that a section between the Troop and the Clan was needed. The Avanzada de Expedicionarias was part of the answer to this, and from that point on came a long series of moments in which the female programme set the pace for the male programme. A notable example is “Las Rutas de la Precursora,” which I discussed in a previous post.
The uniform changed to fit the female form (blouses without pockets, with darts, skirts over shorts or culottes, stockings, etc.), symbols changed, and even the Scout Law changed (causing more than a few heart attacks) — with “is courteous and chivalrous” replaced by “is courteous and acts with nobility.”
The Third Wave and the Historical Debt
The second wave relates to the global trend of moving away from the notion of girls as “non-boys” — where boys and girls are binary opposites — toward girls as having their own distinct needs and rights that may or may not be related to boys. That first cry of independence greatly benefited the development of the Scout Programme.
The third wave began globally around the 2000s and is still unfinished. The tendency is to move away from viewing Scouting as masculine + feminine, toward a Scouting for young people.
The most complex concept for Programme development in recent years (since 2005, which is as far back as I can speak from experience) has been achieving a single Programme — not a Scout Programme translated from masculine to feminine, not a Female Programme only for women, but a Scout Programme for Scouts (regardless of creed, race, nationality, gender, or social class). This may sound like a topic long since resolved, something that should no longer concern us. But no — every day we encounter expressions and concepts, from both men and women, reminding us that we still have quite a ways to go.
Conclusion
Female Scouting is by nature a disruptor. It opens its own doors, claims its own spaces, and thanks to this, themes and activities have been included in the Programme that would otherwise have been very difficult to incorporate.
It has also served as a testing ground and space for experimentation — a place where girls and young women can develop many interests. This same experimentation has benefited male Scouting: social and humanitarian themes would never have been included in the Programme had they not first been tested successfully in the female sections.
Even with exemplary cases like ASDE Scouts de España and many other countries, change is happening more slowly than needed. This third wave is characterized by incomplete change.
We are in debt as a Movement, and we have been unable to give clear and forceful responses to deeply felt demands — such as the recognition of rights and spaces, equal access to decision-making, and most notably, the provision of safe spaces free from harassment and violence.
REFERENCES
Halls A, Uprichard E, Jackson C. (2018) Changing girlhoods — Changing Girl Guiding. The Sociological Review.2018;66(1):257–272.
Mills, S. (2011) Scouting for Girls? Gender and the Scout Movement in Britain, Gender, Place and Culture: A Journal of Feminist Geography 18 (4): 537–556.
