Why Not Girl Guides?

[SouthScout]

Why didn't BSA just start a parallel program and call it Girl Guides. BP did it.

 

[JoeBob]

I would hypothesize that National's goal was financial; how do we maximize our existing base of free volunteer labor in order to protect our salaries?  Starting another program with a new volunteer base would not have yielded the same return.  Although one would think that Girl Guides would have served the girls better and protected several key features of 'boy only'  development.

[ham_solo]

US Girl Scouts are actually wrongly named Girl Guides.   They are part of the international Girl Guides  (and scouts), and are actually the only group in that international organization that calls themselves scouts and not guides.  Personally I think is what confuses people.  GSA is following the guides program and is not actually 'scouts for girls'.

 

[ParkMan]

17 minutes ago, ham_solo said:

US Girl Scouts are actually wrongly named Girl Guides.   They are part of the international Girl Guides  (and scouts), and are actually the only group in that international organization that calls themselves scouts and not guides.  Personally I think is what confuses people.  GSA is following the guides program and is not actually 'scouts for girls'.

 

I think this is a big part of it.  The international association the GSUSA belongs to is WAGGGS- World Associatiins of Girl Guides and Girl Scouts.  I expect some legal work was done a long time ago to restrict usage of Girl Guides here in the USA.

I do think the other part is that the leadership of the BSA meant what they said- that the current program of the BSA is equally applicable to girls.  So, i think it follows through that they would look to use the same name for both programs to reinforce that concept.

[qwazse]

The original Girl Scout program was very much scouting for girls, as was Campfire Girls.

Something happened among baby boomer parents that made the outing part of scouting optional for girls. (At least in US and UK.)

[NJCubScouter]

9 hours ago, SouthScout said:

Why didn't BSA just start a parallel program and call it Girl Guides. BP did it.

I don’t think the name is the real issue here.  The real issue is that there is actually no girls’ program to name - as BSA said there would be, last year.  It was supposed to be a separate, parallel program with exactly the same “program.”  (Though whoever came up with the exactly-the-same-program part apparently had never read Family Life Merit Badge requirement 7.a.  But anyway...)  Boy Scouts was still supposed to Boy Scouts.  Now you see it, now you don’t... no separate program, so there’s nothing to name... except to rename Boy Scouts to be gender-neutral.

But for what it’s worth, when we were discussing the name of the separate girls’ program (back before it was “disappeared”), I did suggest Girl Guides.  Somebody pointed out basically the same thing that ParkMan did above. I think it would have been worth exploring, at least.  If there was a separate program.

 

[NJCubScouter]

9 hours ago, JoeBob said:

I would hypothesize that National's goal was financial; how do we maximize our existing base of free volunteer labor in order to protect our salaries?  Starting another program with a new volunteer base would not have yielded the same return.  

I usually wouldn’t passs up an opportunity to accuse National of money-grubbing, but I don’t understand your point.  Why wouldn’t they want more volunteers, when each new volunteer represents a new registration fee? And there are going to have to be more volunteers anyway, and many of them are going to have to be women.

I have no inside information, but if I had to guess why they didn’t create a separate program, it would be that in designing the separate program, they encountered too many issues and decisions that would have to be made, and they just decided to make their lives easier and include girls in the existing program.

[JoeBob]

1 hour ago, NJCubScouter said:

Why wouldn’t they want more volunteers, when each new volunteer represents a new registration fee? And there are going to have to be more volunteers anyway, and many of them are going to have to be women.

I did skip a few rocks to cross that creek.  Here's why I think that National chose to go co-ed instead of Girl Guides:

Irving would definitely like to have more paying volunteers, and youth memberships. But I don't think that a parallel organization would accomplish that.  

1- Many existing female BSA volunteers would be siphoned off into the new program.  A good number of women that wanted to work with BSA are already members.

2- Many new girl organizations may fail to reach the critical mass for their continued existence, and fold.  How embarrassing!  Safer to augment existing troops that already have numbers with a few girls.

3- In my opinion, BSA no longer has the moral capital to recruit a great number of new outsiders.  Many current volunteers are barely hanging on just to see if their beloved BSA can weather their contretemps.  It's a safer bet for BSA to lure new female members into their existing volunteer base.  If they turn up the heat slowly enough, maybe the number of old frogs hopping out will be less than the new frogs jumping in.

 

Edited June 11, 2018 by JoeBob

[shortridge]

1 hour ago, NJCubScouter said:

I don’t think the name is the real issue here.  The real issue is that there is actually no girls’ program to name - as BSA said there would be, last year.  It was supposed to be a separate, parallel program with exactly the same “program.”  (Though whoever came up with the exactly-the-same-program part apparently had never read Family Life Merit Badge requirement 7.a.  But anyway...)  Boy Scouts was still supposed to Boy Scouts.  Now you see it, now you don’t... no separate program, so there’s nothing to name... except to rename Boy Scouts to be gender-neutral.

But for what it’s worth, when we were discussing the name of the separate girls’ program (back before it was “disappeared”), I did suggest Girl Guides.  Somebody pointed out basically the same thing that ParkMan did above. I think it would have been worth exploring, at least.  If there was a separate program.

 

Do you mind showing me where BSA said it would be a separate, parallel program? I found this piece from Scouting which states otherwise:

“A program for girls ages 11 to 17 will be introduced in 2019. Details will be announced later this year.

“The program will allow young women to work toward — and earn —Scouting’s highest honor, the Eagle Scout Award.

“The requirements will be the same for young men and young women. Young women shouldn’t get — and don’t want — watered-down requirements.”

Source: https://scoutingmagazine.org/2017/12/bsa-invites-girls/

[ItsBrian]

8 minutes ago, shortridge said:

Do you mind showing me where BSA said it would be a separate, parallel program? I found this piece from Scouting which states otherwise:

“A program for girls ages 11 to 17 will be introduced in 2019. Details will be announced later this year.

“The program will allow young women to work toward — and earn —Scouting’s highest honor, the Eagle Scout Award.

“The requirements will be the same for young men and young women. Young women shouldn’t get — and don’t want — watered-down requirements.”

Source: https://scoutingmagazine.org/2017/12/bsa-invites-girls/

I have read that it was suppose to be a parallel program as well. It technically is due to the fact that the girls program has no interaction with the boys. Separate leaders, meetings, etc.

[walk in the woods]

32 minutes ago, shortridge said:

Do you mind showing me where BSA said it would be a separate, parallel program? I found this piece from Scouting which states otherwise:

“A program for girls ages 11 to 17 will be introduced in 2019. Details will be announced later this year.

“The program will allow young women to work toward — and earn —Scouting’s highest honor, the Eagle Scout Award.

“The requirements will be the same for young men and young women. Young women shouldn’t get — and don’t want — watered-down requirements.”

Source: https://scoutingmagazine.org/2017/12/bsa-invites-girls/

Check the FAQ and infographic at https://www.scouting.org/familyscouting/

[shortridge]

1 minute ago, walk in the woods said:

Check the FAQ and infographic at https://www.scouting.org/familyscouting/

All that material is about Scouts BSA, and clearly states the nature of the program. I’m looking for the source from 2017 that said the girls’ program would be separate and parallel.

[walk in the woods]

Ok.  Here's the original announcement touting single gender programming https://www.scoutingnewsroom.org/press-releases/bsa-expands-programs-welcome-girls-cub-scouts-highest-rank-eagle-scout/.

[shortridge]

Thanks! I’m still not seeing any reference to the separate-but-parallel program that @NJCubScouter referenced. The language about the new program is very straightforward:

”Using the same curriculum as the Boy Scouts program, the organization will also deliver a program for older girls, which will be announced in 2018 and projected to be available in 2019, that will enable them to earn the Eagle Scout rank. This unique approach allows the organization to maintain the integrity of the single gender model while also meeting the needs of today’s families.”

If folks interpreted the line about “a program for older girls” as referring to an all-new program, then that’s on the reader, not National.

[Thunderbird]

“A program for girls ages 11 to 17 will be introduced in 2019. Details will be announced later this year."

Implied in this statement was that it would be an additional / separate program for girls.  "Program" means something like Boy Scouting / Varsity Scouting / Sea Scouting / Venturing.  Call it BSA4G or whatever, but, to most readers, it didn't mean gender segregated units (troops).