Why Scouting for girls is like criminal law
I'm watching BBC Breakfast and they have a piece about the fact that more girls than boys have joined the Scouts this year for the first time ever. It's good news for the Scouts that they remain so popular, but it got me thinking about the funny way that sexual equality works. When I was a boy the Scouts were exclusively for boys - the handbook may even have still been called "Scouting for Boys". While I was still a member the UK leadership changed the rules to allow girls to join, but left the choice of whether to admit girls to individual troops. We had just one enquiry from a girl and the leader asked us to vote whether the troop should admit girls. The vote was a unanimous no and as I remember the main reason was because we all just wanted somewhere we could all go that was just for us boys (I was about 10 at the time so maybe the reasoning wasn't quite so clearly defined as I recall). Something that has always intrigued me is why there was a call for...