Women’s Resource Center Records, 1970-2015 | WUA University Archives

Women’s Resource Center - Washington University in St. Louis

The Washington University Women’s Resource Center (WRC) was created in January 1976 by the Feminist Coalition of Washington University.  The space was created to serve as a library, a lounge, and a meeting and informational space for individuals interested in women’s activities both on and off campus. The WRC moved locations several times throughout its 27 year history, as it was first housed on the third floor of the Women’s Building from 1976 to 1981. The WRC then moved to Umrath Hall room 157 in 1981 to be more accessible to students, moved again in 1986 to Prince Hall, and moved back to Umrath Hall in 1991 after a flood destroyed many of the WRC’s resources.

Throughout its history, various women’s groups maintained and staffed the WRC. After the Feminist Coalition and the Women’s Programming Board shared responsibility in the 1970s, the Women’s Resource Project took over in the 1980s. The WRC did not function from 1989-1991 after the flood in Prince Hall and was restarted in 1991 by the Women’s Resource Center Committee (WRCC), a group focused solely on the WRC.

The activities of the WRC throughout its history included coffee hours with professors, panel discussions, writing letters to the editor and editorial for the Washington University student newspaper, Student Life, supporting a women’s film series and later a traveling film series called Women in the Director’s Chair, writing a newsletter in the 1990s entitled WRC News, printing a calendar of women student leaders at Washington University entitled In Her Own Way from 1994 – 1997, handing out information and free birth control, sponsoring speakers, plays, and musicians on campus, collecting independent and popular publications for use in the WRC, and creating annual scrapbooks entitled HerStory and group journals to chronicle the WRC’s activities.  As of 2008, the WRC is no longer operational on campus.