Badges Baiting – Girl Guides Want It All
I PROMISE that I will do my best:
To love my God,
To serve the Queen and my country,
To help other people
and
To keep the Guide Law.
But the Girl Guides are changing. As the Mail reports in “From cooking to career girl, today’s go-getting Guide”.
The modern Girl Guide, as pictured, wears a baseball cap and a T-shirt. The woggle and tie remain intact, but on her feet are trainers and on her legs jean in a light shade of blue.
Knee-length blue socks and tunics are out. The Girl Guides movement supports freedom of movement, and in a fashion that will not overly excite sex Boy Scouts and sex offenders.
And the tasks have altered, too. Whereas in the 1950s Girl Guides could earn badges for repairing saucepans, lighting a fire and mending broken china, they can now gather more modern tokens of achievement.
Badges remain de rigeur, but they now advertise the wearer’s ability to design the wrapper for a new bar of chocolate and giving a dissertation on a film genre.
“Girl Guides lead fight for equality,” says the Express. And there’s another blue goody tucking at the peak of her cap and ready to eat chocolate for Queen, country and the good of womanhood.
And they are speaking with a clear voice. Over 3,200 current and former guides were polled. Three–quarters believe young women are “stigmatised for behaviour that would not bring criticism on young men”. Half expressed concern that their adult careers would suffer is they had children.
Dame Kelly Holmes is the woman they admire most. The ambition of one in five of the younger girls is to become prime minister.
To us, what this means is unclear. But to Jenny Watson, chairwoman of the Equal Opportunities Commission (and she could be Chairman if she wanted to), it is a tragic shame.
Says she: “Sadly the survey proves that 30 years after the Sex Discrimination Act women have not achieved equality. We must tackle the issues before another promising generation has its hopes for the future dashed.”
Things must change. And while we await equality, men are forced to go our to work and die early while women are trapped in a vicious cycle of babies, shopping, love and filling in surveys…
Posted: 27th, February 2007 | In: Tabloids Comment | TrackBack | Permalink
