A Brief History of Women's Centers

Excerpt from Barbara Kasper's articile "Campus-Based Women's Centers: A Review of Practices and Problems" (AFFILIA, Vol. 19 No. 2, Summer 2004 185-98)

"There are more than 460 campus-based women's centers in the United States. Although each center is unique, many of them initially developed as a response to the second wave of feminism inherent in the women's liberation movement of the 1960s and 1970s. Today, most centers have close affiliations with their institutions' women's studies programs. The typical mission statement of a campus-based women's center focuses on offerening support, information, and resources to women students, staff, and faculty on matters of equal opportunity and gender equity. Some centers also open their doors to women from the larger community. Most of these centers seek to provide a programmatic response to the needs of campus-affiliated women, with an emphasis on the elimination of oppression and discrimination on the basis of sex, race, age, class, religion, and sexual orientation as well as other barriers to human liberation. Women's centers vary in their degree of identification with feminist politics and ideology."