The new leader of the Scouting Association is a woman Ann Limb. This would be fine if it was simply a case of the best man or woman for the job. Sadly it looks like an ideologically based choice.

Limb predictably wants to increase the number of girls in the Scouts. This is regardless of the fact that girls have their own organisation, Girlguiding, which makes no room for boys.

This would be fine if girls were in any way vulnerable, voiceless or excluded, as some guiding documents appear to suggest. But we know this is definitely not the case. Boys are disadvantaged all the way through the education system. This is not only about systematic teacher bias, I.e. discrimination, girls also outperform boys in A levels and GCSEs. At all ages males are more likely to be unemployed particularly among 16-24 year olds. Boys spend less time than girls doing homework and more time trawling the internet and playing video games. They are twice as likely as girls to regard school as a waste of time, and while 1,515 boys of between 15-18 were in custody last time I looked, there were only 28 girls. It is boys, not girls, who constitute our disaffected, disenfranchised, socially excluded youth.

However, instead of setting out to give boys more confidence and responsibility, encouraging self-sufficiency and enhancing self-esteem,Limb seems intent on promoting and perpetuating the current anti-male ideology andextending it to include the youngest groups; “The position of young girls and women is such at the moment that unless young boys understand what its’s like to be a young woman then you won’t get them to change their behaviour”. Please Ms Limb could you tell us what aspect of boys’ behaviour is it that you would like to change? Many girls seem intent on blaming others and portraying themselves as victims. Perhaps you should focus your behaviour-changing programme here. Our whole society reverberates with messages about what it is like to be a young woman and many new policies and guidelines are essentially feminist. What it feels like to be a young boy or man, this is something we know absolutely nothing about.

In this country the Guide and Scout movement has become predominantly female (64 per cent) so it is perplexing why the needs of boys are not Limb’s priority.

However, when you see what Girlguiding has come to, it becomes clearer why girls themselves might be keen to colonise the Scouts. From a noble organisation whose central ideal was to “help others at all times” Girlguiding has become another arm of feminist propaganda, teaching young girls to focus on themselves.

“We give girls their own space”, “We give girls a voice”. “Modern guiding believes in empowering girls and young women to make the right choices for themselves and those around them”. This is how Girlguiding is branded today. Getting rid of page 3, promoting schemes such as Athena Swan, promoting women into leadership positions and getting involved in gay pride. From encouraging girls to think for themselves and develop their own beliefs, promoting politically correct ideology is what Girlguiding is now all about.

Encouraging girls to join the Scouts is a short term way of increasing numbers. In the long term boys will be increasingly unlikely to want to join a feminised movement where they are expected to learn what it is like to be a young woman. Not only the Guides but also the Scouts will become another bastion for feminism.

Feminism infiltrates every corner of our society. There is Sports England with “This Girl Can”, Athena Swan in academia and numerous schemes to promote women in business. There are traditional institutions such as the Scouts and the BBC and the endless funding of politically correct feminist groups. A list of all the different and practical ways in which feminist ideology shapes our society is something we should perhaps compile.

Baden-Powell, who set up the Scouts and Guides movement, told us that the real way to get happiness is by giving out happiness to other people. He also advised us to “Try to leave this world a little better than you found it …”.

In our contemporary society there are many who sit on the fence with regard to feminism. But feminism is deeply damaging to the fabric of society, hurting families and communities and creating hostilities between women and men. In its relentless, covert, all-pervasive and underhand way feminism is responsible for much unhappiness.

Listen to Baden-Powell and try to make the world a better place. Fence sitters get off your bottoms and jump off that feminism-neutral fence.