CONTENTS PREFACE i 1. INTRODUCTION TO THE GENDER PROJECT 1 1. Different, equal or one of the boys? 1 2. The Research Project on Gender and Education in Scouting 3 2.1 Background 3 2.2 Project design 5 2.3 Evaluation of the research process 7 3. Analytical approaches 9 3.1 Making everyday life visible 9 3.2 Levels of meaning 11 3.3 Distance and closeness 12 3.4 Constructing ‘gender in Scouting’ from an outsider’s position 13 4. How to read this report 15 2. WHAT IS GENDER? 17 1. Gender in the world, gender in the head 17 1.1 Structural and symbolic gender 17 1.2 Gender as a framework of interpretation 18 1.3 Separation and hierarchy 19 2. Sex and gender 20 2.1 Femininities and masculinities 21 2.2 Norms perceived as nature 22 3. Personal gender 22 3.1 Gendered bodies 23 3.2 Gendered subjectivities 24 3.3 Interactional gender 26 4. Doing gender 27 3. EQUALITY AND DIFFERENCE 28 1. The European legacy: human rights and separate spheres 28 1.1 The dilemmas of equality and difference 28 1.2 Public man – private woman 29 2. Contemporary gender 32 2.1 Different roads to modernisation 32 2.2 Postmodern gender 35 2.3 A common ethic for coeducation: Parity in participation 37 3. Analysing Scouting in the context of gender 38 4. DOING GENDER IN RUSSIA 39 1. Gender in Russian society 39 1.1 Gender goes to market 39 1.2 The strong woman of the weak sex 40 1.3 Bringing up boys and girls to become husband and wife 44 2. Two Russian Scout troops 48 2.1 Scouting in Russia 48 2.2 The troop in the Moscow region 50 2.3 The troop in Bashkortostan 52 3. Doing gender in Scouting 55 3.1 Structural gender: Cooking and carrying 56 3.2 Symbolic gender: Admired heroes and invisible mothers 58 3.3 Interactional gender: Courteous boys and attentive girls 61 3.4 Personal gender: Tired heroes and pretending kittens 63 3.5 Gender conflicts: Egocentric boys and lazy girls 67 4. Comments on the Russian case 69 One of the Boys? Doing Gender in European Scouting i 5. DOING GENDER IN SLOVAKIA 71 1. Gender in Slovak society 71 1.1 Post-Communist women and patriarchal heritages 71 1.2 Unequal equality 72 1.3 Principally we prefer coeducation 74 2. Two Slovak troops 76 2.1 Scouting in Slovakia 76 2.2 The troops in Slovakia 78 3. Doing gender in Scouting 80 3.1 Structural gender: Cooking and mocking 80 3.2 Symbolic gender: Soldiers and servants 82 3.3 Interactional gender: Tough boys and flirting girls 83 3.4 Personal gender: Foolish boys and underrated girls 85 3.5 Gender conflicts: Hard men and sentimental girls 88 4. Comments on the Slovak case 90 6. DOING GENDER IN PORTUGAL 91 1. Gender in Portuguese society 91 1.1 Class and gender 91 1.2 Equality from above – difference from below 92 1.3 Between gender blindness and gender battles 95 2. A Portuguese troop 97 2.1 Scouting in Portugal 97 2.2 The troop in Portugal 98 3. Doing gender in Scouting 100 3.1 Structural gender: Cleaning and quarrelling 101 3.2 Symbolic gender: Rhetoric men and supportive mothers 104 3.3 Interactional gender: Big sisters and little brothers 106 3.4 Personal gender: Courageous boys and responsible girls 108 3.5 Gender conflicts: Fussy girls and unruly boys 110 4. Comments on the Portuguese case 112 7. DOING GENDER IN DENMARK 114 1. Gender in Danish society 114 1.1 From women’s issues to gender politics 114 1.2 Danish ambiguities 116 1.3 Do as you please 118 2. A Danish troop 122 2.1 Scouting in Denmark 122 2.2 The troop in Denmark 123 3. Doing gender in Scouting 126 3.1 Structural gender: Cooking and pioneering 126 3.2 Symbolic gender: Real Scouts and ridiculous girls 128 3.3 Interactional gender: Indifferent boys and hearty girls 129 3.4 Personal gender: Proud boys and strong girls 131 3.5 Gender conflicts: Male chauvinists and girls who lower the standards 136 4. Comments on the Danish case 138 8. GIRLS AND BOYS 140 1. Girls and boys within and between borders 140 2. Gendered worlds 140 2.1 Gender group cultures 140 2.2 Age and gender 142 2.3 Relationships and activities 145 3. Girls and boys – together and apart 148 4. Gender trouble in the patrol 150 4.1 Border work and identity work 150 4.2 Gender models and hierarchies 152 ii One of the Boys? Doing Gender in European Scouting 9. SCOUTING, EDUCATION AND GENDER 157 1. Gender in Scouting 157 1.1 Boyhood and Scouting 157 1.2 Old models in new texts 159 1.3 Freedom for children – and girls 159 2. One of the boys? 161 2.1 The second sex in Scouting 161 2.2 Negotiating gender 164 3. Doing equity? 166 3.1 Recognition and redistribution 166 3.2 Tool box for gender observations 169 REFERENCES 173 APPENDIX I: Desk tasks for the research assistants 176 APPENDIX II: Interview Guides 178 APPENDIX III: Comparison of the Scout Law in the four countries 181 One of the Boys? Doing Gender in European Scouting iii PREFACE This research report was commissioned by the World Organization of the Scout Movement (WOSM). I would like to thank WOSM for entrusting me with this very interesting and challenging research task, in particular the Director and Deputy Director of Youth Programme, Dominique Bénard and Jacqueline Collier, at the World Scout Bureau in Geneva for all their support and cooperation. I would also like to thank the Centre for Women’s Studies and Gender Research at the University of Oslo for providing me with workspace and an inspiring scholarly environment. The project was carried out in collaboration with Scout leaders from different countries. They played an essential role in making this research project a reality, and most of their work in terms of data gathering and organising transcriptions and translations was done on a purely voluntary basis. My warm thanks to Martin Kristensen, Jesper Schaumburg-Muller and Ulla Voelker from Denmark, Fernando Fradique and Lídia da Conceição dos Santos Pedro from Portugal, Yulia Bulanova, Egor Sergeev and Evgeniya Shamis from Russia, and Sona Figedyova and Zuzana Mazancova from Slovakia. I would certainly also like to thank the leaders and young people in the troops studied in Denmark, Portugal, Slovakia and the Russian Federation (Bashkortostan and the Moscow region) for their hospitality and willingness to let their beloved Scout life be an object of study. Several of my research colleagues in - and beyond - Norway took time to read various chapters of the report. This was an invaluable help, especially in terms of understanding the different national cultures. I am gratefully indebted to Ann-Dorte Christensen, Ning De Coninck-Smith, Haldis Haukanes, Alexandra Leontieva and Sverre Varvin. Alexandra Leontieva also helped me find statistics on Russia, and Stein Terje Vikan at UNECE (the United Nations Economic Commission for Europe) in Geneva kindly checked other parts of the statistics. I thank them all! The title of this report refers to "doing gender". Although this may seem to be an unusual expression, it is used consciously and you will soon understand what it means. Oslo, October 1st 2002 Harriet Bjerrum Nielsen One of the Boys? Doing Gender in European Scouting i 1. INTRODUCTION TO THE GENDER PROJECT 1. Different, equal or one of the boys? One misty September morning in the year 1909 a little party of girls might have been seen arraying themselves in khaki shirts and wideawake hats, and setting forth with feverish excitement for the Crystal Palace, where they had heard there was to be a rally of Boy Scouts. The Chief himself was coming to inspect the boys – why should he not cast an eye on the Girls’ Corps, which was prepared to render service in any conceivable emergency, and which surely deserved an approving glance? This depiction of the moment when girls officially entered the Scouting scene is taken from the opening words of Rose Kerr’s book on the story of Girl Guides1. It was said that the founder, Sir Robert Baden-Powell, was taken by surprise when the girls showed up at the rally, but as Laszlo Nagy wrote: ‘the girls stood their ground, and B.P. resigned himself to the inevitable’.2 However, the Founder had known about ‘the girl problem’ before the Crystal Palace rally. In 1908, he wrote about girls and Scouting in several issues of The Scout: I have had several quite pathetic letters from little girls asking me if they may share the delights of a Scouting life with the boys. But of course they may! I am always glad to hear of girls’ patrols being formed.3 Baden-Powell’s initial reaction to the idea of girls as Scouts was, indeed, very modern for his time. He was critical of the contemporary ideal of women as mollycoddled dolls and preferred the ideal of women as men’s partners and comrades. So why should the sporting and outdoor life of Scouting not be as healthy for girls as for boys, and why could they not receive the same training? His Victorian mother talked him out of such an improper idea. She and other contemporary critics made him understand that girls were not boys, and strongly discouraged him from making toughness a central feature of Scouting for girls.4 When the first guidelines for girls were published in the autumn of 1909 (in response to the fact that 6,000 girls had already enrolled as Boy Scouts), the difference between the genders was firmly reinstated.