Changing girlhoods - changing Girl Guiding

This article discusses the changing nature of girlhood over the last century as it is depicted through an empirical study of all editions of Girl Guide handbooks since 1910. We describe three main interrelated strands of change, which have co-occurred to both ‘girls’ and ‘girlhood' The first is that girls are seen to be increasingly incompetent and more vulnerable than they used to be. The second is that ‘girls’ are increasingly seen to be increasingly ‘girls’ in and of themselves. We conclude with the final strand, which is conversely one of continuity: girls and girlhood are seen to be timeless. This is not to say that we take 'girlhood' and 'childhood' to be homogenous categories. We illustrate the importance of incorporating children and childhood into more general theories of social change, in order to better understand how they are intrinsic to the mechanisms of intergenerational change