This article was written by Guest Writer Xyla Carlson. Xyla is a Junior at McCaskey and a Youth Leader of Troop 99, a Gender Inclusive Scout Troop in Lancaster County. 

Recently, the Boy Scouts Of America adopted a new name for their flagship program (Scouts BSA), and more controversially, opened to children of all genders. Many opposed this historic change due to the belief that the program was “not meant for girls.” Technically this is true, but a look at the movement’s origins in the United Kingdom show that it hasn’t always been so exclusively male.

In 1908, Scouting for Boys was published by Robert Baden Powel in the United Kingdom to train boys to be optimal citizens and contributing members of society. Boys across the country picked up the book and began scouting troops. Despite its initial intentions, girls picked up the book too, and began small all-female troops or even combined with boys to form mixed troops. Girls would sew their own shirts and use scarves or neckerchiefs in place of an authorized group neckerchief. Once the ideas of scouting were available to the public, at the time, there was little the organization could do to control them. 

These girls still operated independently of official scouting spaces, but they were not thrown out of the movement. Robert Baden Powell himself encouraged female scouting. “I am always glad to hear of girls’ patrols being formed… there is no reason at all why girls shouldn’t study scoutcraft,” he once said. However, at the time, parents and politicians found it inappropriate. The organization quickly began to regulate scouting spaces and who was allowed to become a scout, but girls simply began using their brothers’ names or their own initials. 

The first-ever Boy Scout rally was held in 1909 at Crystal Palace in London. A mixed troop gatecrashed. One scout recalled:

It was a Scout rally and, of course, having called ourselves scouts, we thought all scouts were girls and boys – mixed. But then we discovered they weren’t – they were all boys … And then B.P. (Robert Baden Powell) himself came up to us and said ‘what are you doing here? Who are you?’ We said ‘Please Sir, we’re the girl scouts’ and he said ‘I’ve never heard of you. Anyway, you better come and join in’ which of course pleased us very much. 

Some think this is when Baden Powell realized he needed a separate organization for the girls. The Girl Guide Association was created. In 1918, Olave Powel became chief guide stating, “Whereas the teaching of the Boy Scouts develops manliness, that of Girl Guides makes for womanliness.” This program prepared young women for supporting roles in society. But many resisted.

Many girls continued to subscribe to the original ideals of scouting that were so important to them, continuing to wear their homesewn khaki uniforms and animal patrol patches and not subscribing to the new patrols named after flowers. 

Much later, in 1990, scouting opened up for girls across the UK after years of discussion and after scoutmasters threatened to go public with the number of girls that had been incorporated into their units. 

Scouting has always had space for youth of all genders. Society simply couldn’t make the space in their minds to allow girls to be equal to boys.

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