The Girl Guides of Canada is a youth service organization, serving almost 10% of the
Canadian female population aged 5-17, that aims to teach girls and young women to become
responsible citizens. In this thesis, I review the curriculum of the Pathfinder branch (for girls and
young women aged 12-15) of the Girl Guides of Canada. Using feminist, anti-racist, and queer
perspectives, I treat "responsible citizenship" as a discursive concept and conduct a discourse
analysis of the Pathfinder programme to discover how it attempts to gain the consent of girls and
young women to particular definitions of responsible citizenship.
Drawing on feminist citizenship theory developed by Yuval-Davis, Anthias, Alexander,
and Ross, I argue that the state implicates select female citizens in nation building practices as
biological reproducers and transmitters of culture. I also draw on theories of moral regulation
extended by Sangster, Strange, and Loo to illustrate ways in which the state and voluntary
organizations attempt to gain the consent of citizens to particular ways of being. I argue that,
because its texts authorize particular definitions of responsible citizenship, the Pathfinder
curriculum implicates girls and young women in capitalist nation building in Canada.
Specifically, I argue that the Pathfinder programme normalizes heterosexuality,
whiteness, and ability, and privileges middle-class values. I also demonstrate that a responsible
citizen, according to the Pathfinder curriculum, performs caregiving and environmental
stewardship as volunteer service, prepares to join the labour force, and is healthy, hygienic,
cheerful and obedient. I raise questions about the nature of the organization's efforts to teach
about sexism, racism, classism, ableism, homophobia and heterosexism, and suggest some ways
in which the curriculum can attend to these social relations to develop a more inclusive image of
the ideal responsible citizen. I also suggest a number of directions for future research.
| Identifer | oai:union.ndltd.org:LACETR/oai:collectionscanada.gc.ca:BVAU.2429/11713 |
| Date | 11 1900 |
| Creators | Faingold, Elizabeth |
| Source Sets | Library and Archives Canada ETDs Repository / Centre d'archives des thèses électroniques de Bibliothèque et Archives Canada |
| Language | English |
| Detected Language | English |
| Type | Electronic Thesis or Dissertation |
| Relation | UBC Retrospective Theses Digitization Project [http://www.library.ubc.ca/archives/retro_theses/] |
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