The Boy Scouts of America have made a lot of changes in the past few years.  They have made it acceptable to have openly gay leaders and scouts, along with recently allowing transgender scouts to join.  Now they want to reach out to girls and allow them to join.  As can be found on the Boy Scouts of America website, Chief Scout Executive Michael Surbuagh stated, “The values of Scouting—trustworthy, loyal, helpful, kind, brave and reverent, for example—are important for both young men and women.  We strive to bring what our organization does best—developing character and leadership for young people—to as many families and youth as possible as we help shape the next generation of leaders.”  The people who are the most upset about this are not boys in BSA or even parents, but the Girl Scouts.  As stated in their blog, “The need for female leadership has never been clearer or more urgent than it is today—and only Girl Scouts has the expertise to give girls and young women the tools they need for success,” the Girl Scouts said in a statement.  The Girl Scout program is afraid that membership will go down now that girls have the option to choose Boy Scouts.  The president of the Girl Scouts wrote a letter to the BSA administration when they were only considering accepting girls asking BSA to reconsider.  But why shouldn’t girls be able to join Boy Scouts?  If girls deem the Boy Scouts to have more useful skills and lessons, then they should be able to join.  Why not let boys join Girl Scouts as well?  If boys want to learn other skills that are taught in Girl Scouts then let them.  Keeping Girl Scouts and Boy Scouts separate and gender restrictive only encourages gender roles.  Girl Scouts pride themselves in trying to empower girls but they still keep all of the skills they teach more feminine directed.  Not all girls feel empowered by doing feminine things.​ Not all boys feel empowered by doing masculine things.  So boys and girls should be able to choose what clubs they would rather join.  These clubs are meant to empower young children so why shouldn’t we let kids do what empowers them.