The Boy Scouts of America was historically known for being a single-gender organization for young boys to learn valuable life skills and cherish fraternity with one another. However, the club announced this week that it would be rebranding itself to “Scouting America” in an effort to be more “inclusive.”
As of February 8, 2025, the scouting organization will be ditching the name “Scouts BSA” for “Scouting America,” removing any trace of gender from its title. BSA President and CEO Roger A. Krone claimed the name change is an attempt to encourage girls to join the club.
According to Krone, removing the term boy from the organization was the logical “next natural step” to make all youth “feel welcomed and recognized.” He said, “While this may be a surprise to some of you, for us this is a straightforward evolution and the next natural step in ensuring all American youth feel welcomed and recognized in an organization that is meant to serve all Americans.”
The president maintained that the name change will not alter the club’s mission to prepare “young people over their lives to make ethical and moral choices by instilling the scout oath, and the scout law. America’s values are scouting values.”
As Krone noted, the Boy Scouts is ever-evolving, but this was not the first step in the club abandoning its long history of male-only membership. In 2018, the Scouts began to allow girls to join the Cub Scouts for youth ages 7 and 10. The following year, the Boy Scouts, for youth aged 11 to 17, began to allow females in its ranks. Ever since the move, the organization has been embroiled in controversy.
Despite the Boy Scouts moving to allow girls in their club, the Girl Scouts have defended maintaining a “single-gender environment within their ranks.“The benefit of the single-gender environment has been well-documented by educators, scholars, and other girl- and youth-serving organizations,” according to the Girl Scouts.
Reportedly, there are over 1 million members in the Boys Scouts of America, where more than 176,000 are girls. Over 6,000 young women have achieved the rank of Eagle Scout, representing roughly 10% of the elite rank.
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New Jersey scout leader Bob Brady decided to form an all-girls BSA troop, explaining how it would promote inclusivity. “Five and a half years after we started, you see people in town who see us marching a parade, doing a service project saying ‘Girls can be Scouts? It’s called Boy Scouts,’” Brady said during a news conference. “It takes some explaining to do… so I think this is gonna be great to help with recruiting and let everyone know the inclusive program that we’ve become over the last decade.”
He added, “Young girls, young boys, there’s nothing about the Scout oath or a law that is inherently masculine or inherently feminine and applies across the board. Young girls in 2024 like to go camping, they like to go hiking. You know what, I’ve had more moms and women tell me over the last five or six years, I wish I had the opportunity to be in scouts when I was a kid.”
Featured Image: Lance Cpl. Erik Brooks, Public domain, via Wikimedia Commons, https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Boy_Scouts_teach_Cub_Scouts_DVIDS483227.jpg