![\"\"](\"https:\/\/damesnet.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2019\/04\/Brownie.jpg\")
OK. I confess. I loved the Brownies and hated the Girl Guides,\nwhere I only lasted a few weeks. The Brownies made sense. You earned badges for\ndoing what I deemed were silly things, and you then sewed the badges on to the\nsleeves of a little brown dress. The silliest and most difficult thing I had to\ndo was traverse a section of the hall where we met each week balancing on two\nupturned flowerpots. I suppose it was designed to help physical coordination,\nbut I can assure you it took me countless attempts to get from the starting line\nto the finish. But it was all worth it for those magic occasions when we got to\ntoast marshmallows over an open fire and sing jolly songs. <\/p>\n\n\n\n
The one drawback was Hilary Ann. Her mother was Brown Owl \u2013\nand nepotism doesn\u2019t do it justice. It was always \u2018Hilary Ann, please could you\nshow the other girls how to\u2026\u2019. Or \u2018Hilary Ann, I\u2019d like you to lead the nature\nwalk\u2019. You get my drift.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
I don\u2019t think Brown Owl liked me very much, and I never achieved\nthe coveted accolade of \u2018flying up\u2019 to the Guides. I was grudgingly allowed to \u2018walk\nup\u2019. Was this perhaps due to my poor flower pot balancing? I\u2019ll never know. Anyway, as mentioned, my tenure there was short\nlived. Shortly after my arrival the Guide Captain organised for us all to visit\nan old people\u2019s home, as they were called then. My mother assumed we would be\ngiving out cups of tea and biscuits and having jolly chats.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
I returned home that day in shock and had nightmares. I was\n11 years old and had been asked to give a bed bath to an old woman who was demented\nand shouted at me. My mother raised merry hell with the Captain and I never went\nback.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
I\u2019ve just discovered that modern day Brownies and Girl Guides\nhave other problems to deal with. The Girlguiding Association has issued the\nresults of a research study into 76,000 of its UK members aged between 4 and 25.\nNot a mention of the stress of walking on flowerpots. Instead, they found that\nclimate change and sexual harassment were the biggest worries for these girls\nand young women, together with bullying, gender stereotypes and pressure to\nlook in a certain way. <\/p>\n\n\n\n
Perhaps the most shocking bit of data for this dame in 2019 was fact that for 15,600 girls aged 10-14, not being able to do the same thing as boys was highlighted as the most unfair thing about being a girl today. A 15-year-old advocate within the Girlguiding Association said that girls were not being listened to on the important issues that affect them and their futures. It does beg the question, have we got anywhere in terms of gender equality? I mean, this is the UK, not Saudi Arabia.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
I for one am thrilled that these future dames have someone\nlike Greta Thunberg, the 16 year old Swedish activist, to inspire them. Her\nextraordinary composure on what is becoming a world stage, as she resolutely\ncampaigns for governments to take climate change seriously and act on the scientific\nevidence, is remarkable. <\/p>\n\n\n\n
If only the worst thing that today’s girls had to fear was the flower pot challenge..<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
At least today\u2019s girls won\u2019t have to face the flowerpot challenge<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":6,"featured_media":6487,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_exactmetrics_skip_tracking":false,"_exactmetrics_sitenote_active":false,"_exactmetrics_sitenote_note":"","_exactmetrics_sitenote_category":0,"_monsterinsights_skip_tracking":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_active":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_note":"","_monsterinsights_sitenote_category":0,"footnotes":""},"categories":[2,67,182,55,53,56,59],"tags":[76,80,194,195,92,82,196],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/damesnet.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/6482"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/damesnet.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/damesnet.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/damesnet.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/6"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/damesnet.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=6482"}],"version-history":[{"count":8,"href":"https:\/\/damesnet.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/6482\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":6527,"href":"https:\/\/damesnet.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/6482\/revisions\/6527"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/damesnet.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/media\/6487"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/damesnet.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=6482"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/damesnet.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=6482"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/damesnet.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=6482"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}