I’m finding this discussion interesting since in my current area in the US Southeast there are far far more opportunities for girls than boys when it comes to outdoor activities.
The girl scouts run over a half dozen inexpensive sleep away camps within an easy half day drive our our current location. My daughter has gone every year since she was 5 years old. In addition to traditional themed summer camps they have adventure camps. My daughter gets to pick out which weeks she wants to go from a huge catalog, is able to pay for most of it from the money she earns selling cookies, and we just need to drop her off on Sunday and pick her up on Saturday. Last summer she spent one week on an unsupported hike on the Appalachian trail and another week whitewater rafting and rock climbing.
If I want to send my son to a similar camp it has to be a private camp at easily 6 times the price of the girl scout camps because the Boy Scouts offer none of this. Well, you can go camping at a boy scout owned camp but only as part of a troop activity and only if every boy has a parent attend with him. They will not run camps where the boys attend without their parents for fear the the councilors will rape them or something.
So my daughter gets to spend the entire summer having a great time and my son gets to attend one week of private camp. Luckily he’s more into baseball than camping so he isn’t too disappointed.
There are three girl scout troops near us that I’m familiar with. One is focused on the sorts of arts and crafts and badges stuff that seems to be described above, one is focused on camping, and one concentrates on international travel. So girls can select the troop that represents their interests.
I’m sure that things are different in other areas, but at least around here the girls have it way better when it comes to scouting.
A friend of my wifes was just that type of Girl Scout leader and did try this. Unfortunately most of the other Mom’s (funny exception - the one lesbian Mom) really ruined such outings by being catty or condescending like complaining the cabins were not fancy enough or the bathrooms were not clean enough (Its a camping trip, not the Ritz). At one campout one rich lawyer Mom drove off early in the morning in her BMW looking for a Starbucks. When she came back, guess what? She brought back doughnuts! Oh gee. The girls liked those. However after eating doughnuts they didnt want to actually cook breakfast over a campfire which was what they were SUPPOSED to be learning how to do.
I think part of it is just changing times and demographics.
I camped a lot as a kid. It was an easy, affordable family hobby- just pile the kids and the gear in the station wagon and go.
I don’t take my family camping now. With one kid, she’s going to end up bored and restless. We have no place in our home to store gear, and getting out of the city is a pain. With today’s cheap airline tickets and hotel discounters, we aren’t financially limited to cheap places nearby. And my husband grew up in a culture without a camping tradition. There are just so many things we want to do, and can do, that camping doesn’t make the cut.
Camping is great, but it’s not a universally adored or relevant pastime.
Yeah, I’m a guy and I have no interest at all in camping. You might as well ask if I want to spend a week in prison for recreational purposes. You can’t please everyone. Let the girls who want to camp go with the boy scout troop.
Well that isn’t true. They don’t sell tents (why would they, you can get a good tent through REI) - but our council offers a two week Boundry Waters Canoe trip or a two week bike and tent trip or something similar every year. They don’t get many takers, but enough to fill out a few trips.
My own daughter does a week of tent camping every year through Girl Scouts and has for five years now.
Oh, I was the leader (still am, technically - but the girls are in high school now, so it isn’t much) for my daughter’s troop. We weren’t a camping troop - only my daughter has ever been interested in camp - so she camps through the Council. I’m not much of a camper, and my co-leader is CPAP dependent - so the troop camping we did manage had to be cabin based.
Our girls were interested in having a service troop. They raised $2k for the American Cancer Society, planted flowers and caroled for an Alzheimer’s home, volunteered with younger girls, developed at taught drama workshops for middle schoolers, and volunteered for the annual Halloween festival that the regions Scouts put on - running a “spook site.”
When you consider I got them for one hour every two weeks, and that they had to do the majority of planning and organizing, that’s pretty good.
Boy Scouts is a whole different organization. Boy Scouts expects parent involvement from all the parents - Girl Scouts is done on the backs of two parents per troop. (Troop has a different meaning in the different organizations as well - for us, a troop is more like a pack of the same age kids - for us, what Boy Scouts think of as a troop, Girl Scouts think of as a Service Unit.
That was basically my experience as a Girl Scout. We did day camp, but there was only one night that was a lsleepover and I myself didn’t go. During day camp though we went hiking, cooked food outdoors on fires (we also learned how to do the cardboard oven thing*), flag ceremonies, make candles, etc, various songs, etc.
Other than that, it was a wide variety of activities. We went biking, swimming, put on plays, cooked, went to museums, did crafts, had costume parties, visited various historical sites around the area, did various charitable activities, etc.
*I remember making pizza in those things that was absolutely divine.
(Still, no longer having badges? That sucks. I had a whole slew of them on my sash!)
They still have badges, but they revamped the program. I have the middle school cadet book right here. Legacy badges include sportsmanship, first aid, and cuisine. There are badges for track and field, trailblazing, babysitting, woodworking, public speaking and digital movie making - and others.
So, there are new badges, more relevant to the current era, but it’s the same basic system, right? The kid does the activities on the “checklist” for the badge and then a scout leader signs off and they can sew that badge onto their sash. I remember the merit badges were for the Boy Scouts were all simple things you could knock out in a few hours if you had all the materials and supplies handy.
They haven’t changed it like the poster above said, where it’s kind of an “everyone’s a winner” thing where the kid can just make up the requirements for the badge instead of completing some small checklist of minimum requirements.
Yep. Girl Scout badges usually take five to ten hours to work at a Brownie/Junior level and more at a middle school level. And yes, there are a set of requirements - you can pick some and skip some, but you don’t make them up.
Girl Scouts also added “Journeys” which are a set of badges around a theme with basically a lesson plan and workbook for leaders to get through. There are three Journeys per Girl Scout level and ideally you work through one of them over your year - but there isn’t a requirement to do so. The Journey are “Its your World, Change It” (Social Action, Volunteerism, Leadership), “Its Your Planet, Love It” (Science, with an Ecology focus), and “Its Your Story, Tell It” (Self Awareness through Arts - like writing and making movies). All have art projects and volunteer projects and Science projects to work on as part of the Journey.
My daughter, the Girl Scout Counselor in Training says “and we don’t use lighter fluid when we start a fire - you get a match and have to go find your kindling. If you waste your match, you’d better hope someone else got their fire started so you can start your kindling off their fire.” Apparently, she was quite disgusted with the Boy Scouts in school when they did their fifth grade camping trip and they all made fires with lighter fluid.
Girl Scouts seem to be a lot more decentralized than Boy Scouts as an organization at least here in New England. My daughters are Girl Scouts and they do real tent camping several times a year but it depends on troop they are in and there are a lot of fractionalized choices. My ex-wife (their mother) has been their troop leader for the past two years and she likes camping and equestrian activities so they focus on those and attract girls that also want to do those things as well. Other troops are more focused on crafts or social projects. I don’t see a problem with that approach except that it can be limiting if a Girl Scout is interested in a wide range of things that aren’t available in combination through any local troop. The main common theme in all Girl Scout troops is their cookie sales.
Boy Scouts are bigger and offer a more centralized structure but also more variety overall. The larger Boy Scout events like summer camp and the mega-events like Jamborees offer just about everything from rifle shooting, first-aid, archery, canoeing, electronics, wilderness survival and even auto mechanics. The range of merit badges that individuals can pursue on their own covers a huge variety of different interests. Becoming an Eagle Scout is much more socially recognized and I presume more difficult than the equivalent Girl Scout rank.
I can easily see why some young women might want to join the Boy Scouts instead of the Girl Scouts if their local Girl Scout troops don’t meet their interests well and I certainly don’t have a problem with them being allowed to do so. However, the Boy Scouts are a private organization so I don’t believe that it would be appropriate to push much past that and force them to change their name or any significant structure of their programs in the name of further inclusiveness. I haven’t actually heard of anyone proposing the latter but that is probably the reason they are reluctant to adopt the policy because they know that some activists want a whole lot more than the cards they are showing at the moment.
The Girl Scout equivalent is the Gold Award. A few years ago there was a huge outcry over how difficult it had become. The biggest deals…it must be sustainable - there is no building of a park bench and you are done, you have to establish something that will continue to give in a way a park bench doesn’t. It cannot service Girl Scouts - you can’t cut a trail through camp or help younger Scout. It must be done individually - no teams or group projects, and it must take a minimum of 80 logged hours. Service projects done for Journeys and badges do not count. You must do an approved proposal to start, and document your process. After all of that, you have to submit your project report to Council and Council will decide if its good enough. Those requirements are a few years old, they may have backed off.
Eagle Scouts must become “Life Scouts” and earn 21 merit badges and have completed a six hour service project.
Interestingly, most councils spend a disproportionately high amount of their resources on outdoor activities (as compared to girl participation). Ours does. Over 25% of the organization’s assets are camp properties, and maintaining the horses and camp properties is so expensive that the council operates the camping/horseback riding activities at a loss. Yet only 7% of girls in our council choose to participate in camping and outdoor activities.
So, if anything, some of the outdoor activities are getting disproportionately high funding–which is part of why so many councils are selling off some of their camps. The cost of maintaining these resources is hampering councils from investing in other, more popular Girl Scout pathways.
The bottom line is, there’s a lack of interest among the membership. Girl Scouts is committed to developing leadership qualities in women. Part of that is providing a place where girls can choose what interests to explore. The organization is obligated to spend their funds and staff time accordingly.
I don’t know why you would even suggest this question ! I don’t blame the girls for wanting to go camping instead of selling some stupid cookies ! I hated being a GS it was boring as all hell , I would had love to been able to go camping and sleeping outside in the woods than selling cookies . Why should boys have all the fun? I think it might be hard finding GS leaders that know a lot about camping in some towns.
I’ve known a number of girls who have enjoyed their girl scout experiences and would not have enjoyed the experience if it was more like the boy scout activities. Some girls like doing arts and crafts and selling cookies.
The girls scouts shouldn’t become more like the boy scouts because a minority of their membership would like it to be. If a majority of girls would prefer more boy scout type activities then there is a much more valid debate to be had.
Cookie sales are to fund the troop, not an end in and of itself. (And if you’ve ever eaten them, you wouldn’t call them stupid. I suspect the secret ingredient is crack)
I’m disappointed to learn that girls today are such precious snowflakes that they can’t be outside! Good heavens. I loved GS camp and went for four years. The first year was one week, but after that it was two weeks. I have wonderful, vivid memories. My camp is still in existence, fortunately.