Girl Scouts, Community Practices, and the Reproduction of Inequality

• In Event: 4167 - Section on Children and Youth Roundtables (1 hour)
  In Refereed Roundtable 60min: Children & Youth Roundtable 3: Institutional Contexts

Abstract

As a national organization, Girl Scouts of the United States of America (GSUSA) prides itself on building “girls of courage, confidence, and character, who make the world a better place.” Yet, despite this mission statement, and a long history of inclusion and diversity initiatives, GSUSA is still disproportionately White and middle class. Drawing on three years of field work as well as interviews with Girl Scout staff, parents, and volunteers, I demonstrate how Girl Scouts inadvertently reproduces inequality through key patterns at the community level. First, the division of councils into “service units” along town and school district lines creates artificial and unnecessary divisions. Then recruitment activities, volunteer requirements, and troop formation patterns, all of which overlap and intertwine, often result in an exclusionary organization despite a mission to support and provide opportunities to all girls. Much of this is unintentional and unexamined, and some of it can be explained by the very real struggles of volunteer leaders. However, the result is that girls who already have social capital gain additional advantages through GSUSA’s focus on social networks, skill building, and leadership development, while the girls who could theoretically gain the most are often excluded. In this paper, I show how meso-level practices contribute to childhood inequality in ways that might be missed even by organizations trying to “do good.”

Author

• Rachel Erice Nickens, University of California, Davis