As Boy Scouts eye recruiting girls, the Girl Scouts bristle
WASHINGTON — Long plagued by declining membership, the Boy Scouts are considering a campaign to recruit in a previously untapped market: girls.
The Girl Scouts aren’t having it.
A feud between the two largest scouting organizations broke into the open this week when the president of Girl Scouts of the USA sent a letter to Boy Scouts President Randall Stephenson and accused the group’s “covert campaign” to recruit girls “reckless” and “unsettling.”
“We were disappointed in the lack of transparency as we learned that you are surreptitiously testing the appeal of a girls’ offering to millennial parents,” Girl Scouts President Kathy Hopinkah Hannan wrote in her letter to Stephenson. “Furthermore, it is inherently dishonest to claim to be a single gender organization while simultaneously endeavoring upon a co-ed model.”
The letter was first reported by BuzzFeed News.
Hopinkah Hannan said the Boy Scouts’ “well documented” declining membership — its numbers have dwindled by a third since 2000, to just more than 2 million as of 2016 — is behind its push to include girls.
The tone of the letter dismayed Boy Scout leaders, said BSA spokeswoman Effie Delimarkos. “We are disheartened to see the Girl Scouts pull away from the possibility of cooperation to help address the needs of today’s busy families,” she said Wednesday.
The Boy Scouts have some coed programs dating back nearly 50 years.
The Boy Scouts said in a statement they are considering including girls in their ranks not to boost their numbers but in response to requests from families who want their daughters to be a part of the same organization as their sons.
“The Boy Scouts of America believes in the benefit of single-gender programs,” Delimarkos said. “But in evaluating the possibility of serving the whole family, we’ve been having conversations with our members and volunteers to see how to make Scouting accessible for families.”
No final decision on whether to include girls has been made, she said.
To the Girl Scouts, such exploration amounted to a show of disrespect.
A Girl Scouts spokesman, explaining the letter, said the organization “believes in maintaining an open and honest dialogue with other organizations in the youth serving space . ... To that end we sent a professional letter” to the Boy Scouts, and look forward to “working out those issues with them in a mutually satisfactory manner.”
Girl Scouts’ membership has also taken a hit in recent years, falling from its peak of more than 3.8 million in 2003 to 2.8 million in 2014.
Delimarkos said the BSA respects the Girl Scouts.
Some women outside the Girl Scouts have lobbied the Boy Scouts to include girls in its ranks.
In February, after the 107-year-old Boy Scouts announced it would admit transgender children in its scouting programs, the National Organization for Women called on the group to “honor its decree to help all children by permitting girls to gain full membership.”
But the “single-gender expertise” of Girl Scouts’ leaders has inherent value, Hopinkah Hannan argued in her letter.
“Girl Scouts believes in meeting the needs of America’s youth through single gender programming by creating a safe place for girls to thrive and learn,” Hopinkah Hannan wrote. “Over the last century, GSUSA has adapted to the changing environment, always prioritizing the health, safety and wellbeing of girls. For BSA to explore a program for girls without such priorities is reckless.”
The Boy Scouts organization, which was launched into the national spotlight during President Donald Trump’s controversial July speech at its annual jamboree in West Virginia — should focus its efforts on recruiting all boys, including black and Latino youth, instead of girls, Hopinkah Hannan said.