Gender-neutral scouting sparks national debate

starting a Girls Scouts,” said Kathryn Kolbert, director of the Athena Center for Leadership Studies, a program at Barnard College, a women’s college in New York City. Ms. Kolbert has worked with Girl Scouts on some joint programming with Barnard. “To me this is just an act of desperation by an organization which has historically been extraordinarily discriminatory and is now facing the consequences.”

Those consequences, Ms. Kolbert said, are smaller pools of interested children. Girls Scouts and Boy Scouts are struggling to retain and grow their membership.

Today, the Girl Scouts says it has 1.8 million members nationally and that participation has been falling steadily over the past decade. However, officials at the organization pointed out that the losses have become less severe, suggesting that membership could be stabilizing.

The Boy Scouts boast of membership of 2.3 million “youth members” — no longer just boys — but figures from its annual reports indicate that it has shrunk by about 300,000 members since 2012. There have also been reports of Scout councils having to sell their campgrounds.

The Girl Scouts said the group would respond to the change by redoubling its promotion and recruitment efforts.

“We do what we do very well. [The Boys Scouts] are now just added our list of competitors for kids’ time,” said Girl Scouts of Greater Los Angeles marketing and advocacy director Kenya Yarbrough. “With the market confusion that they’re relying on, they’re looking at us to give them the answers.”