The book covered topics such as tracking, signalling, and cooking, and it outlined a method for an "instruction in good citizenship".

[1] In those days, camping and hiking were not common activities for girls, as shown in an excerpt from The Boy Scouts Headquarters Gazette of 1909: "If a girl is not allowed to run, or even hurry, to swim, ride a bike, or raise her arms above her head, how can she become a Scout?

Following negative publicity in The Spectator[6] magazine, Baden-Powell decided that a separate, single-sex organisation would be best.

[8] Other influential women in the history of the movement were Juliette Gordon Low, founder of the Girl Scouts of the USA, Olga Drahonowska-Małkowska in Poland and Antoinette Butte in France.

Their aim was to send teams of adult Girl Guides to Europe after World War II to aid with relief work.

[13][14] The work of the organisation is described in two books: All Things Uncertain by Phyllis Stewart Brown and Guides Can Do Anything by Nancy Eastick.

A total of 198 Guiders and 60 Scouts, drawn from Britain, Australia, Canada, Ireland and Kenya, worked in teams during the relief efforts.

[17] Even when most Scout organisations became mixed-sex, Guiding remained sex-separated in most countries to provide a female-centred programme.

[18] Things that are shared amongst all Guide Units are:[12] Two central themes have been present from the earliest days of the movement: domestic skills and "a kind of practical feminism which embodies physical fitness, survival skills, camping, citizenship training, and career preparation".

[28] In the 1909 The Scheme for Girl Guides, the uniform for the newly emerging movement was given as: Jersey of company colour.

Officers wear ordinary country walking-dress, with biretta of dark blue, white shoulder knot, walking stick, and whistle on lanyard.