A Study Of The Girl Scout And Girl Reserve Movements In The United States With A View To Selecting From Each Those Elements That Would Have Significance For A Program Of Work With Younger Girls In China

Author : Rachel E. Nickens
Publisher :
ISBN 13 :
Total Pages : 0 pages
Book Rating : 4.5/5 (825 download)

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Download or read book The "Girl Scout Advantage" written by Rachel E. Nickens and published by . This book was released on 2020 with total page 0 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: The mission statement of Girl Scouts of the United States of America (GSUSA) is to "build girls of courage, confidence, and character, who make the world a better place." As it has since 1912, GSUSA continues to adjust to changing social conditions. For example, in the last decade, GSUSA has linked badge activities with Common Core educational standards, placed new emphasis on STEM and leadership, and partnered with multinational corporations like Mattel and Raytheon. In doing so, GSUSA seeks to maintain its relevance by preparing girls for twenty-first century careers in STEM, business, and politics. GSUSA is formally committed to setting girls up for adult success through imparting the "Girl Scout Advantage." Based on three years of ethnographic fieldwork, including observations of four troops in two different communities and 53 in-depth interviews with troop volunteers, I argue that parents and leaders believe Girl Scouts can mold a girl's childhood, and, ultimately, shape her adulthood. Parents see the "Girl Scout Advantage" as providing their daughters with a wider worldview, human capital in the form of skills and knowledge, formal credentials that look impressive on resumés and college applications, and social capital in the form of larger networks and connections with professionals. Creating this advantage, however, requires family level commitment. Mothers are at the center of this effort as troop leaders and co-leaders, devoting considerable time and energy to cultivating their daughters' futures. I call this "concerted motherteering"- bringing together Annette Lareau's concept of "concerted cultivation," the idea of "intensive mothering" discussed by sociologist Sharon Hays, and the long history of women as volunteers. However, maintaining ordinary troop operations requires dedication from all parents, and troop travel and troop-hosted community events often involve siblings, grandparents, and other extended family. This family-level commitment offers family-level benefits, including a forum for shared parenting and the expansion of social networks. Though the hope of the "Girl Scout Advantage" is that it "opens doors" for girls, Girl Scouts can also build social and cultural capital for entire families. Despite the urgency around "preparing girls for the future," there is widespread disagreement within the Girl Scout community about what matters for a twenty-first century girl. These debates center around home ("life skills"), work (STEM, leadership, and entrepreneurship), and the outdoors (adventure and sport). This uncertainty reflects the unresolved status of girls and women in the stalled feminist revolution: no one is certain what a contemporary girl's future will hold. Additionally, although GSUSA produces curricular materials, leaders have tremendous autonomy in curating their troop's experience based on their ideas about gender and their visions of their daughter's future. This leads to vastly different Girl Scout experiences for different troops of girls. Parents also bring differing levels of resources-in the form of their networks (social capital), knowledge (cultural capital), and money (economic capital)-into the troops they lead. When these differences in capital intertwine with GSUSA's local and regional level organizational structure, the Girl Scout experience can become exclusionary and reproduce class inequalities. Specifically, the creation of service units along town and school district lines, recruitment activities, volunteer expectations, and troop formation patterns all contribute to disparities in opportunities. More than most youth organizations, Girl Scouts has earnestly tried to reach underserved populations through extensive outreach and financial aid programs. However, it has continually fallen short, and GSUSA remains disproportionately white and middle to upper-middle class, creating a thoroughly uneven "Girl Scout Advantage." I reveal how meso-level practices contribute to childhood inequality despite organizational and individual attempts to "do good" or "do better."