This remarkable book offers enlightening reading for everyone interested in international law, human rights, global health, public health and health promotion. Public health and health promotion professionals, including international healthcare organisations, care agencies, and international charities will find the analysis illuminating. It is also of great interest to policy makers and shapers in communities and government, political activists and all those with an interest in equality and globalisation.

In the early years of the twentieth century, Americans began to recognize adolescence as a developmental phase distinct from both childhood and adulthood. This awareness, however, came fraught with anxiety about the debilitating effects of modern life on adolescents of both sexes. For boys, competitive sports as well as ""primitive"" outdoor activities offered by fledging organizations such as the Boy Scouts would enable them to combat the effeminacy of an overly civilized society. But for girls, the remedy wasn't quite so clear. Surprisingly, the ""girl problem"" - a crisis caused by the transition from a sheltered, family-centered Victorian childhood to modern adolescence where self-control and a strong democratic spirit were required of reliable citizens - was also solved by way of traditionally masculine, adventurous, outdoor activities, as practiced by the Girl Scouts, the Camp Fire Girls, and many other similar organizations. Susan A. Miller explores these girls' organizations that sprang up in the first half of the twentieth century from a socio-historical perspective, showing how the notions of uniform identity, civic duty, ""primitive domesticity,"" and fitness shaped the formation of the modern girl.