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Girl Guiding began with girls who would not wait to be invited. In 1908, reading Scouting for Boys, some formed patrols of their own and called themselves Girl Scouts; by 1909, by most accounts, thousands had registered with Scout Headquarters.^[2] In 1909 girls appeared at the Boy Scout rally at Crystal Palace.^[1] A scheme for Girl Guides was published that November (the exact sequence of these first steps is still in some doubt), and in 1910 the Girl Guides were formally founded, led by Agnes Baden-Powell and her brother Robert.^[1]

What Guiding offered

For girls in the early twentieth century, Guiding offered things few other institutions did: camping, hiking, first aid, signalling, and responsibility for other girls through the patrol systemA small group of Guides (today usually four to eight) led by one of the girls themselves. The basic unit of peer leadership in Guiding.. It also taught housework, childcare and a disciplined idea of service. Evidence status: Interpretation Historians see this mix not as a contradiction but as the point. Tammy Proctor argues that interwar Guiding used “gendered assumptions about citizenship” to train girls as “citizen servants”.^[3]

From empire to world association

Guiding was born in imperial Britain. Its name came from a frontier corps in British India, and its first handbook was called How Girls Can Help to Build Up the Empire. Movements soon began in other countries (in the United States, Juliette Gordon Low registered the first troop in 1912), and in 1928 national organisations formed the World Association of Girl Guides and Girl Scouts.^[1] International friendship was real. So, for a long time, were hierarchies of empire and race.^[4]

A century of change

The movement kept remaking itself: new sections for younger and older girls, service in two world wars, a programme review in the 1960s, new uniforms, and changes to the Promise (twelve of them between 1910 and 2013).^[5] Today the UK has four youth sections: Rainbows, Brownies, Guides and Rangers.^[6] Recent years have brought the sale of the national activity centres and contested decisions about membership.

How to use this site

Guiding in 12 objects

We chose twelve objects that together tell this story (handbooks, uniforms, badges, two company logbooks, a camping bucket and more) for what they can reveal and because we could get permission to show them. They are on the objects page.

The questions we ask

1. What did Guiding promise girls that other institutions did not?
2. Who shaped the movement: girls, adult women, the Baden-Powells, local volunteers, churches, schools, states, international bodies?
3. How did patrols, badges, uniform, camping, the Promise and service produce ideas of citizenship and gender?
4. Who could take part, who faced barriers, and how did that differ by place and period?
5. How did a movement born in imperial Britain become an international federation, and how did national organisations adapt, remake or reject the British model?
6. What has stayed the same, and what has been reinvented?

Sources

1. World Association of Girl Guides and Girl Scouts, “Our history”, WAGGGS. Accessed 25 September 2026.
2. Sarah Mills, “Scouting for girls? Gender and the Scout Movement in Britain”, Gender, Place & Culture 18, no. 4, 2011, pp. 537–556.
3. Tammy M. Proctor, “On My Honour: Guides and Scouts in Interwar Britain”, Transactions of the American Philosophical Society 92, pt 2, American Philosophical Society, 2002.
4. Kristine Alexander, Guiding Modern Girls: Girlhood, Empire, and Internationalism in the 1920s and 1930s, UBC Press, 2017.
5. Girlguiding, “Background and concepts of the Promise and Law for trainers”, The Guide Association, 2013. Accessed 25 September 2026.
6. Girlguiding, “Unit guiding and sections”. Accessed 25 September 2026. Current UK section names and age ranges.

Last updated 11 November 2026.