Odd Woman, Odd Girls: Reconsidering How Girls Can Help to Build Up the Empire: The Handbook for Girl Guides and Early Guiding Practices, 1909–1918

This article considers how Agnes Baden-Powell’s 1912 Guiding handbook, How Girls Can Help to Build Up the Empire, and texts written by grassroots female “Scouts” sustain space for unconventional girls. Although Baden-Powell and her contemporaries seemed to feminize Scouting material, Guiding had the potential to turn odd girls into odd women. Wooing both self-proclaimed Girl “Scouts” and a sceptical public, the texts of early Girl Guiding use a double-tongued rhetoric: while they pronounce ideals of imperial motherhood in order to assuage the fears of reluctant adults, they encourage girls’ self-definition through homemade uniforms, solidarity with peers, and career ambitions.