Scouting for girls? Gender and the Scout Movement in Britain

Abstract

This article brings a feminist geopolitics to bear upon an analysis of the Boy Scout Movement in Britain in order to illustrate how an emphasis upon seemingly banal, embodied practices such as dressing, writing and crafting can provide a counter-view to prevailing notions of the elite, organisational 'scripting' of individualised, geopolitical identities. Here, these practices undertaken by girls are understood not as subversive, or even transgressive, in the face of broader-scale constructions of the self and the collective body, but rather as related moments in the emergence of a complex, tensionridden 'movement' that exceed specific attempts at fixity along the lines of gender. Using archival data, this article examines various embodied practices by 'girl scouts' that were made possible by such attempts at fixity but which also, in turn, opened up new spaces of engagement and negotiation. A cumulative shift from a determinedly masculine to a coeducational organisation over the course of the twentieth century thus reflects complex geographies of gender, national identity and citizenship and offers a historical contribution to the feminist geopolitics literature.

Youth organizations and the reproduction of nationalism in Britain: the role of Urdd Gobaith Cymru

“…With its members pushing for a proliferation of definitions of good citizenship over the course of the twentieth century, so the Scouting movement has had to reflect upon and reshape its own identity as an organisation. Some demands have been accommodated in relatively straightforward ways, such as the need for a co-educational Scouting movement (Mills, 2011a) and demands to embrace religious difference (Mills, 2012). Others, such as those thrown up by the presence of a Communist Scout within the movement during the 1950s, did not lead to a process of accommodation but rather encouraged the Scout movement to re-emphasise its traditional commitments to the state and to Christianity (Mills, 2011b).…”

“…Mills has shown how the Scouting movement has been continually re-defined and 'stretched' in different directions, whether in relation to gender, faith and ethnicity, and political ideals (Mills 2011a;2011b;.…”

Youth on Streets and Bob-a-Job Week: Urban Geographies of Masculinity, Risk, and Home in Postwar Britain

“…The organisation is a highly gendered space, established by Robert Baden-Powell following a camp in 1907 with a specific class-based vision to create appropriate youthful masculinities for a stronger citizenry, nation and Empire (Proctor 2002;Warren 1986). Whilst these ideas were contested by early girl scouts, the Girl Guide Association and co-educational scouting (Mills 2011), the Boy Scout Association has remained a key site for the production and negotiation of gendered identities in the United Kingdom -with almost one in three adults having belonged to either scouting or guiding when interviewed in 1967 (cited in Springhall, 1977: 3).…”

“…I have argued elsewhere that scouting in the UK functioned as a youth citizenship project (Mills 2013) that has been negotiated over time by adults and young people in terms of its policies and practices (Mills 2011). Here, I want to argue that the regular activities of the organisation such as Bob-a-Job Week were a vital part of that training in 'good citizenship' with youth 'doing their duty' at a local scale, but that furthermore, these activities also reveal wider attitudes towards youth in post-war Britain and their engagements with public urban space (if 'public' is indeed an appropriate term to describe streets and suburbs, see Valentine 1996a).…”

Young ghosts: ethical and methodological issues of historical research in children's geographies

“…These included a minority of Scouts who held communist beliefs in the 1950s, one of whom -nineteen year old Paul Garland -was dismissed from his Scout Group in Bristol for his activities with the Young Communist League (Mills 2011a). I also drew on accounts of self-styled 'girl scouts' of various agesincluding Sybil from South London and Marguerite from Norfolk -who began in the very first years of scouting to engage with (and subvert) an organisation not intended for female youth (Mills 2011b). Although these biographical connections were often partial, in the sense they referred to a specific period in these young people's lives, they provided a unique insight into their experiences and relationships with scouting.…”