Female leadership in Boy Scouting

[Mr. Boyce]

Worth considering here is the fact that male youth often WANT to find a non-familial adult male as a role model.

 

So it goes.

 

We also should be leery about making scouting a big family thing: there is much to be said about helping youth learn to stand on their own two feet and represent themselves as their own individual.

 

Developmental psychology is a good thing to know about.

[qwazse]

Also worth considering is that boys are looking for non-familial adult female role models.

 

Not to pan dev psych, but it is a science of norms, not variation. (There was I time when the journal of that name asked authors to not put error bars on the plots of trends in the data!)

 

All that is to say, we should accept individuals, not their gender into positions of responsibility. If ther is a female with integrity and direct-contact skills and experience, then you may be doing your boys a disservice by passing them over for less qualified males. Your making a trade off between preserving a culture for some hypothetical gain and being flexible to address immediate needs.

[Eagledad]

>>All that is to say, we should accept individuals, not their gender into positions of responsibility. If ther is a female with integrity and direct-contact skills and experience, then you may be doing your boys a disservice by passing them over for less qualified males. Your making a trade off between preserving a culture for some hypothetical gain and being flexible to address immediate needs.

[qwazse]

Edad:Im curious, do you think a male leader would have the identical influence on the girls in a Girl Scout Troop as a female leader?

 

That's like asking if Jane would have the identical influence as Suzie. If Bob's influence is more like Jane's than Suzie's do we count it as identical to a female leader's? More importantly, would either woman's influence be corrupted if Bob came camping with them on weekends?

 

The men I know who help lead a GS are admired by their daughters. By GS camp staff, not so much. My coadvisor has absolutely no problem with men of integrity (especially her husband) camping with her troop.