29 August 2008
Change it Up! Basis of GSUSA Changes
Posted by admin under: policies .
In attempting to figure out where all these new changes for GSUSA are coming from I found out that the GSUSA has been conducting its own market research relating to what girls want. That makes sense. In fact, it’s one of the main headings on the national website under “Research”. So, I went ahead and walked through one of the publications noted there: Change It Up! What Girls Say About Redefining Leadership. Clearly, leadership changes were on the mind of the national office and so they went about trying to find out what that means to girls. Boys were asked the same questions in order to get a comparison between the genders.
The first thing the paper asserts is that leadership is defined by kids as power and control, but doesn’t note what percentage of kids said this or how they expressed it. Given that the paper is 71 pages long and has many statistics this seems like a strange oversight. In fact, the assertion is made four more times with the title “command-and-control” as the leadership form.
One of the interesting things the survey statistics reveal is that the new priority of the GSUSA, leadership, is noted as one of the lowest priorities for the girls they questioned: 22%. The explanation of leadership focus, however, is that the qualities the girls cite as things leaders should have such as making the world a better place is also one of their own top priorities.
The GSUSA research indicates that a significant majority either do not care or do not want to be leaders: 61%. Clearly this is troubling to the Girl Scouts organization, as it is to me. How will we get things done in a world where we need to help each other if no one wants to be a leader? So, GSUSA tried to find out what the reasons were for avoiding leadership.
On page 10 they concluded “The greatest single barrier to leadership reported by girls is self perception-a lack of self-confidence in their own skills and competencies”. On page 31 they say “It is important to note that barriers to leadership are consistent among boys and girls, but that girls experience fears and inhibitions about social acceptance more acutely. Fully one-third of girls who do not want to be leaders attributes [sic] their lack of motivation to fear of being laughed at, making people mad at them, coming across as bossy, or not being liked by people. These barriers make clear that some girls still struggle with the unwritten rules of what it means to be ‘feminine’ and exhibiting stereotypically “female” behaviors like being nice, quiet, polite, agreeable, and liked by all”.
Here the research seemed to make a leap I didn’t understand or follow. GSUSA stated that because girls say they don’t want to be disliked they are being held back by feminine stereotypes. Nothing in the paper backed up that assertion. However in the conclusion on page 58 they redoubled that belief: “Future research is needed to explore what girls think would help to mitigate these fears, what adults can do and what environments are conducive to creating a safe space in which girls can take risks that allow them to challenge stereotypical ‘female’ behaviors that limit their aspirations”.
Here’s where I get a chance to drag out my soap box and stand up to shout “Go camping!”
Where can they feel safe and not judged? When they are out with their troop camping. How do they help the environment and make the world a better place, both of which were cited as top goals? Get out in the environment. Learn to love it. Learn how to improve it. Learn how you can survive there with skills you’ve learned with your friends in the troop. Safe and supportive. How do you learn new skills? By having a list of requirements and a goal that is clearly defined. We call this earning badges. When they’ve earned the badge they know they’ve mastered the skill and feel confident about their abilities.
Thank you GSUSA. You’ve exactly made my point about why you should be reinforcing the traditional model of Girl Scouts. Yes, this is a struggle for the future of this great organization and there are many of us who think the national office is trying to take the GSUSA down an experimental path that is unnecessary and may do harm to their reputation. I don’t want to tell them “I told you so” if membership begins to dramatically fall off. Of course it will still be a fantastic way to share your daughter’s childhood, but why change a proven success when their own research is saying that the old ways are exactly what are needed?
I encourage everyone to read the paper and determine for themselves what the data concludes. I think they actually agree with me.
Possibly Related Posts:- New Mass. CEO Pushes Girl Scout Message
- Different Take on Journeys Transformation
- Declining Interest in Girl Scouts - By Parents
- Late to the Party, Again
- GSUSA Leadership Focus Panics Cookie Buyers
2 Comments so far...
» New Mass. CEO Pushes Girl Scout Message Says:
29 September 2008 at 4:04 pm.
[...] I have my own view on the results of that survey. Still, you want your CEO to be someone who has a strong message and is going to accomplish her [...]
» Different Take on Journeys Transformation Says:
10 November 2008 at 4:37 pm.
[...] Girl Scout outdoor activities like camping into focusing more about training girls to be leaders. My understanding was that the national organization had commissioned a study that indicated this was…, although I had a different understanding of those study results. I’m not a trained [...]
