So Long God and Liz: The New Australian Girl Guides Promise

Girl Guide salute, as used when making the promise,
demonstrated by a Canadian Guide and Brownie (1985)

For an organisation with a small membership, Girl Guides Australia has attracted local and international media attention in the past week. Though there are fewer than 30,000 girls and women involved in Guiding in Australia today, down substantially from a peak of 80,000 and despite a century-long legacy in which one million Australian women are former Guides, the very idea of changing a traditional organisation still excites public opinion. This week the more than century-old Guide promise was revised to remove reference to a “duty to God” and service to the Queen. The change is clearly intended to stem the decline in Guiding in Australia. This downward trend is not reflected in the United Kingdom where there are more than half a million Guides and one in every three girls of the appropriate age is enrolled in Brownies. For an organisation teetering on the edge of becoming unviable in its current form, the change in the Australian Guide promise is a major, and controversial, step in demonstrating that an organisation built out of British imperialism is still relevant to 21^st century girls in a postcolonial nation.

Across the past decade or more, Guiding in Australia had already begun moving away from many of the traditions that defined it during the mid-20^th century. Uniforms became more casual, with mix-and-match polo shirts and other casual wear. Overall the new look is less reminiscent of a 1970s QANTAS flight attendent crossed with a sailor in full regalia in an attempt to lose some of the daggy connotations associated with being a Guide. In what I thought was a sad moment, the Brownie section of the movement was merged with Guiding such that there is no separate uniform for Australian girls in the younger age group (and no toadstool, Brown Owl, skipping around mirrors, or Woorails, Tintookies or Lullagullis).  

Australian Guiding has been eager to show that it is modern and progressive and a cool place to be. Witness this television advertisement from three years ago that was clearly not impressive to the one Guide who chose to comment on it. The logic of tween and teen years means that anything that girls need be told by adults is "cool" is, in fact, the farthest thing from being so. Even I knew that I was flirting with danger as a Brownie in 1988 and did not make the transition to Guiding when I became too old for my brown dress and yellow skivvy.

Changes in uniform and name, coupled with attempts to promote Guiding on television, seemingly did little to attract more girls to an organisation that was nevertheless making great efforts to provide a relevant and challenging program for today's girls. Guiding in Australia has an image problem. As in the UK, the shifting cultural make-up of Australia's population has prompted some of the changes to Guiding. In 2007, Girl Guides UK introduced a headscarf to the official uniform to encourage Muslim girls to feel welcome in Guiding. Last year a Muslim Guide unit was established in New South Wales in an attempt to draw in girls from communities who have not traditionally been part of Guiding in Australia.

Ismaili (a sect of Shia Islam) Girl Guides circa 1920s holding a portrait
of Sir Sultan Mahomed Shah Aga Khan

Nevertheless, any idea that Guiding was or is a solely Christian organisation is untrue. A substantial number of units, especially in the United Kingdom, had associations with church groups, but an equally substantial number were run from neutral community halls or purpose-built huts. From the beginning, Scout and Guide founder Robert Baden-Powell made it clear that girls must believe in a higher being in order to join, but the notion of God did not preclude girls of faiths other than Christianity from becoming Guides. Indeed, it was the imagined relevance of Guiding and Girl Scouting to girls from every kind of background that meant that it was adopted in one-hundred-and-forty-five countries, with Hindu and Muslim nations among those that formed affiliations with the World Association of Girl Guides and Girl Scouts not long after its formation. Guiding began in India in 1911, Turkey in 1923, Lybia in 1958 and the United Arab Emirates in 1973, to give just a small number of examples.

Without denying some of the missionary efforts underlying the establishment of Guiding in some of these countries, or the historical separation of Indigenous girls from white girls in some places, Guiding did set out with goals of being relevant to, and inclusive of, girls of all faiths and races. Olave Baden-Powell, the World Chief Guide from 1930 until her death in 1977 (and Baden-Powell’s wife), visited over one hundred countries to meet with Guides, and spent a substantial amount of time in places such as Kenya.

How curious, then, that it is imagined in 2012 that steps need to be taken to ensure that girls of all faiths and backgrounds are welcome in Guiding: this idea has been at its core for more than a century. The recent change is oriented around the “promise”, a brief paragraph that is generally only spoken once in a Guide’s time in the organisation, unless there is an extraordinary situation in which the promise is renewed (as at the Guiding centenary celebrations recently). In this way, it’s reminiscent of a marriage vow—symbolic, but of little ongoing importance in day-to-day living.

The original British Guide promise read:

“On my honour, I promise that I will do my best-,

To do my duty to God and the King,

To help other people at all times,

To obey the Guide law.”

The promise that I made in Brownies in Australia in the 1980s was very similar:

“I promise that I will do my best,

To do my duty to God,

To serve the Queen and my country,

To help other people,

and to keep the Brownie Guide law.”

It is also how the Australian Guide promise read (minus the word “Brownie”) until the following  promise was adopted:

“I promise that I will do my best:
To be true to myself and develop my beliefs
To serve my community and Australia
And live by the Guide Law.”

Queen Elizabeth II inspects a Girl Guide

Much of the media response has focused on the removal of God and the Queen from the promise. Australian Scouts have the option of mentioning the Queen or leaving her out, but God remains. In the UK, the Guide promise wording is still in the vein of the original promise, but “to love my God” replaces “do my duty to God”. This retains the spirit of Baden-Powell’s intent that Guides should believe in a higher being (though some countries were originally permitted to replace the term God with an alternative), but that this could accommodate girls of any religious faith. While Australian Guiding could have similarly changed “duty to God” to “love my God” to more clearly show the inclusion all kinds of religious belief, they have instead opted for the vague “develop my beliefs”.

I think this wording indicates that there is no longer a requirement to have any kind of faith in a god, rather than being an attempt to accommodate girls of all religious faiths, who have been welcome from the outset. As an atheist, the removal of reference to God does not bother me, but it is intriguing that this change has been presented as a way of accommodating different religious backgrounds rather than acknowledgement of Australia’s increasing secularisation, or at least of declining participation in formal religious attendance. There has been critique of UK and US Guide and Scout organisations for discriminating against atheists in their membership terms, and this change in Australia has successfully removed reference to God in a way that seems more accommodating of religious diversity rather than being irreligious.

Though the removal of reference to the Queen has been of most interest to monarchist and republicans, the changes to the accompanying Guide Law are striking for the way they mark of changes in how we perceive childhood. The original Guide Law was composed in 1910:

"A Guide is loyal and can be trusted.
A Guide is helpful.
A Guide is polite and considerate.
A Guide is friendly and a sister to all Guides.
A Guide is kind to animals and respects all living things.
A Guide is obedient.
A Guide has courage and is cheerful in all difficulties.
A Guide makes good use of her time.
A Guide takes care of her own possessions and those of other people.
A Guide is self-controlled in all she thinks, says and does."

The new Law bears little relationship to the original:

"As a Guide I will strive to:
Respect myself and others
Be considerate, honest and trustworthy
Be friendly to others
Make choices for a better world
Use my time and abilities wisely
Be thoughtful and optimistic
Live with courage and strength."

While it is admirable that girls are encouraged to think about their potential to change the world, some of the deletions are revealing. To be “cheerful in all difficulties” does suggest a kind of outdated model of the uncomplaining housewife, yet the notion of staying positive despite adversity still seems relevant, especially in a world in which children are increasingly shielded from disappointment and its by-product, resilience. In the brief discussion of the changes in the Law in the media, the use of the words “loyal” and “obedient” were seen as especially inappropriate for girls and women. Loyalty is a valuable quality in all humans, and for girls who develop through contemporary hurdles to coming-of-age, such as cyberbullying, being a trustworthy friend is surely still important. “Obedience” is much more fraught in that the notion of women “obeying” their husbands that was embedded in the marriage oath suggested a gendered obligation to subservience. Nevertheless, it is telling that we no longer expect children to “obey” or do as they are instructed by parents, teachers, or community leaders, as in Guiding.  We also lose specific reference to being kind to animals, which is disappointing in an age of factory farming, animal testing, and wholesale destruction of habitat that is entwined with environmental degradation. What better way to "make choices for a better world" than by "respect[ing] all living things"?

I understand that the girls and leaders involved in Guiding all feel some kind of ownership over the organisation and that agreeing on a new promise and Law must have involved inevitable compromise and concession. The intent of the changes are no doubt worthy, in that they aim to make Australian parents and girls see Guiding as a worthwhile place to socialise with other girls and to develop leadership and practical skills that they might not undertake in school. The removal of God and the Queen from the promise removes much that was symbolic of Guiding throughout its first century. The test will be whether a new model of Guiding, without these traditions, retains sufficient meaning and identity, or whether holding on to these traditional signs, in modified form, and with attempts to modernise, as in the United Kingdom, is a better strategy for the survival of Guiding.

Women in Australia's Military: On the Front Line of the Gender War

I had an article published at The Conversation to coincide with Remembrance Day. It's called "Women in Australia's Military: On the Frontline of the Gender War", and was inspired by the news that women will be permitted to serve in armed combat roles in the future.

In response to the article, I received a lovely email from a woman who has served in the defence force, but who was prevented from pursuing her preference to be a helicopter pilot because she was a woman. Her daughter also wishes to enter the military- in the SAS, no less. Regardless of what some of us might think of military campaigns, I am please that this young girl will not be told that there is something she cannot do simply because she is female.

A Belated Christmas Treat

It perhaps comes as no surprise that I was a rampant certificate collector as a girl. At my Catholic primary school, some children would take it upon themselves to collect rubbish in the yard and would then inform someone in authority of their selflessness in order to receive a holy card for their good deed. (From recollection, this sometimes involved presentation of a fully-laden metal garbage bin.) I cannot say for certain that I did not jump on the bandwagon when I learned of the largesse that picking up some chip packets and balled-up Gladwrap could bring.

Certificates were seemingly valued in 1916 as much as 1986. I bought this fantastic one that was presented to the dutiful Gwendoline Hatton on eBay. Somehow it has made its way down through the family for over a century in perfect condition, showing just how important her work was in perhaps knitting some socks or bundling up some clothes to send to a soldier. If you can't make them out, there are Girl Guides and Boy Scouts spelling out the letters "A Happy Xmas" with semaphore. My mother would have said that they have taken the "Christ" out of Christmas, but there are only so many flag-bearing boys and girls that can be fit on a small piece of card.

It's a small sign of how children were inserted into both the war effort and the imagined task of maintaining the British Empire. I wonder how the current fighting in the Middle East is being presented in schools today, if at all? I remember after 9/11 there was solemn discussion about how to prevent children being afraid of terrorism if they had seen the attack on the news, yet so much print culture of the Victorian and Edwardian period deliberately exposes children to news of war, sacrifice and potential invasion. Though it's hard to be too worried by the cheerful looking soldier and sailor on this certificate who appear rosy-cheeked and well-fed.

Girl Guides article in The Age

I forgot to mention that I had an opinion piece published in The Age newspaper on the Girl Guides to coincide with the Centenary celebrations. Well, the Centenary that is not really the Australian Centenary if any of the historical material I've seen is anything to go by. That is, 2011 really should be the Centenary, but the stamps are issued, the coin has been struck, and it is being celebrated in Australia this year to coincide with the British anniversary of Guiding.

It was difficult to have an opinion on Girl Guiding. The piece initially began as a historical "did you know" jammed full of interesting oddities, but it was not opinionated enough for an opinion piece. This is why I inserted the slant about how Guiding might be something of a counter to all of the imagined problems with girlhood in a sexualised and consumer-culture oriented world. Oddly enough, the now former Victorian Labor government's plan for all year 9 students to attend a "boot camp" to attain life skills released about a month later seemed to share similar ideas about the potential of the outdoors to impart vital life skills. That said, engagement with a movement with a well-developed programme for young people attended weekly for several years is no doubt more successful in doing so than a potential two-week horror show of short-sheeted beds and damp clothing.

A Centennial Guide to Serving Queen and Country (and Biscuit Sales)

The first rule of being a Brownie Guide was never to admit that you were a Brownie Guide. This was the norm in my 1980s childhood, when the Brownie uniform for pre-teen girls comprised a fetching combination of a brown dress and yellow roll-neck skivvy. As much as I enjoyed skipping around a toadstool, crafting forest animals from worse-for-wear pantyhose stuffed with newspaper and completing tasks to increase the number of badges that could be stitched to my uniform, I was nevertheless aware that outside the Guide and Scout realm and its accompanying mythology, such pursuits would fuel several years of school-bus ridicule. The strongest recollection I have of this rule occurred when our Brown Owls informed us that to celebrate Guiding we would be permitted to proudly wear our uniforms to our respective schools. A lone girl from another Brownie pack arrived at my primary school on this day wearing the uniform, replete with embroidered badges for such accomplishments as baking and water safety. She spent the day deflecting scatological jokes and lurking in inconspicuous regions of the playground. Other closet Brownies knew that the last thing that we would do would be to admit that we too were Lullagullas, Tintookies and Woorails in our spare time. But, on reflection, who were we concealing our membership from? Guides Australia estimates that one million Australian women are current or former Guides.

It is now one hundred years since Lieutenant General Robert Baden-Powell of the British Army sparked the world’s largest youth movements. In May 1908, Baden-Powell, renowned for his military smarts in the Boer War (1899-1902), published a book entitled Scouting for Boys, compiled from pamphlets he issued from January of the same year. Far from being a potentially embarrassing pastime to conceal from friends, for girls joining the movement was initially something of a rebellious act of which many an Edwardian mother disapproved. Baden-Powell had little intention of creating an equivalent organisation for girls, but an unintended consequence of the publication of his book was that girls as well as boys, in countries as distant as Australia and New Zealand, used it as a manual to direct their own “Scout” activities. While the Guiding movement was officially created in 1910, how can we fail to commemorate the plucky girls who independently set about “Scouting” with Baden-Powell’s book in hand?

Some six thousand girls had registered as “Scouts” when Baden-Powell staged a large rally for his emerging contingent of boys at London’s The Crystal Palace in September 1909. From the swift notation afterwards declaring that girls would be shifted to their own organisation, we only imagine to Baden-Powell’s reaction to the sight of patrols of “Girl Scouts” marching up to the rally of boys while wearing Scout hats and wielding staves. How could he toughen the nation’s youth and rebuild England’s military might with girls along for the ride?


Baden-Powell was nevertheless supportive of a separate organisation for girls. In response to the pressing demands of willing girl participants, he created a new movement, with a different purpose and name. Symbolic of its adaptation for girls, the animal names given to Scouting patrols, for instance, were replaced with genteel variants like “Violets”, “Fuchsias”, and “Bluebells”. Not all of the former Scouts accepted these changes without complaint. The official history of the Guides notes the thoughts of one of the first Girl Scouts of the 1st Mayfair Troop: “When Guides first started, we refused to join them, for having been Peewits and Kangaroos, we thought it was a great come down to become White Roses and Lilies-of-the-Valley!” The floral fascination did not end there: Brownie Guides were originally called “Rosebuds” in 1914. (Sadly, the Brownie name was unceremoniously excluded from Australian Guiding in the mid-1990s but lives on internationally. Girl Guiding UK claims that one in three eight-year-old British girls today is a Brownie).

There was not a Girl Guide biscuit or toadstool in sight in Baden-Powell’s original vision of Guiding. In his early suggestions for the scheme, drafted with his younger sister, Agnes, Baden-Powell remarks that girls might be instructed to build the character of the nation: “in hospital nursing, cooking, home nursing, ambulance work; and… in chivalry, patriotism, courage, Christianity, and so on…without necessarily making her a rough tomboy”. Yet despite the best efforts of Agnes, who Baden-Powell entrusted with the running of the Guides in its early years, because of its outdoor focus, it was difficult to break the perception that Guiding encouraged boyish behaviour. The Girl’s Realm magazine from 1909 points to the concerns that some parents held about the Guiding’s outdoor activities making for “rough-and-ready” and “somewhat gypsy-like” girls.

Bowerbirds that children are, earning competency badges was central to both Scouting and Guiding from the start. Some of the first Guide badges were identical to those that boys could attempt (first aid, cook, cyclist, electrician, pioneer, and signaller), while other domestic and nursing badges were introduced for Guides (laundress, matron, needlewoman, sick nurse and child-nurse). But this does not mean that Guides were encouraged merely to darn socks and wipe runny noses: it was also possible for them to gain a badge for their skills in rifle shooting.

Both the Scouts and Guides were formed amidst fears of the decline of the British Empire, which was popularly referred to as “the empire on which the sun never sets” for its global reach. The first Guide Handbook, reflecting the need to defend British territory and boost colonial populations, includes chapters on finding and tending to the injured, life on the frontier and patriotism. The hospital component of Guiding was grounded in domestic tasks such as washing, disinfecting, dusting and arranging a larder, but also extended to dressing wounds. Robert Baden-Powell’s biographer, Tim Jeal, mockingly describes the hospital activities of the Guides: “for the sake of future wounded Territorials, Guides were obliged to bandage and re-bandage each other repeatedly. They also had to spend hours practicing bathing babies (large dolls doing duty for the genuine article).”

But at the outbreak of World War I, it was nursing that proved the mettle of 40,000 Guides (half the membership of the Scouts at the same time) and subsequently dramatically boosted its popularity for girls and its ongoing acceptance. The bandaging and re-bandaging that they had been performing on each other was applied during the War as Girl Guides assisted the Red Cross, St John’s Ambulance, relief committees, the Soldiers and Sailors Help Society, cooked and sewed for hospitals, and cared for the children of working mothers.

The organisation initially formed in part to transform “the girls of the factories and of the alleys of our great cities” had earned universal acceptability in the practical application of its training. The first handbook alone should have been enough to sway those with any doubt as to Guiding’s altruistic core. It is crammed with tales of girls conducting rescues: children are winched from the bottom of a well, poison is sucked from wounds inflicted by a mad dog, pupils are freed from a blazing schoolhouse and even drowning boys are dragged ashore. And don’t think that these adventures were daintily depicted. Sometimes rescue was rough for girls. Another story of a girl’s bravery in the face of pyromania sees the heroine lose an arm to an exploding lamp.

Robert Baden-Powell’s much younger wife Olave (she was 23 and he was a sprightly 55 when they married in 1912) gradually assumed more involvement in Guiding after he resumed administrate control from Agnes in 1915, and in 1918 she became “Chief Guide of England”. The historical imperial motivations behind many Scout and Guide activities soon dissipated. The sense of tracking, knot-tying and camp cooking as preparation for life in distant lands faded with the power of the British Empire. The Guide Promise to serve “Queen and country”, however, still remains in place in Australia. My own Brownie hut was adorned with a framed—almost unrecognisably youthful—photograph of Queen Elizabeth II, which held little significance for us as children even in the 1980s.

I now carry a travel pack of tissues and a mobile instead of always toting a hanky and 30 cents to make a call at a phone box, but the central tenet of Guiding, to “Be prepared”, has remained in place for almost a century and lives on, almost without thought, in millions of women worldwide who were once Girl Guides.