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The Well-Situated Girl is the first academic study of the history of Swedish Girl Scouting. Through a qualitative and interpretive method, which has its methodological home in the hermeneutic tradition, and with theoretical inspiration from Simone de Beauvoir’s work The Second Sex the aim of the thesis is to conceptualize Girl Scouting as girls’ and women’s history.  The thesis analyzes the emergence of scouting for girls,  the establishment of Girl Scouting in Sweden during the years prior to World War I and the specific kind of vision, version and process of girlhood and womanhood that the movement enabled and encouraged during the interwar period. Particular focus is put both on the movement’s textual construction and representations of the Girl Scout and Girl Scouting as a lived experience. Furthermore, how the intertwined character of the textual and scouting as a lived experience facilitated a new way for girls to conceive, embody their girlhood and live as girls.

Through a thematic analysis of five different aspects of the movement – phenomenon, organization, activity, identity and culture - the thesis concludes that Girl Scouting created a space where girls and women could meet in an intergenerational, international and work-oriented context which suggested and created an opportunity for girls to move from a historically constructed object position to a partially self-constructed subject position.