Women's Resource Centers

Themes and Trends

The history of Women's Resource Centers is formally and informally documented in the personal oral histories of those women who organized the first Women's Resource Centers, in plays and poems about the experiences of women in higher education, through the creation of Websites, and in multiple other venues. One can broadly categorize the pieces that exist as attending to the following themes: structures of Women's Resource Centers, challenges and struggles faced by Women's Resource Centers, and action/activist practices of Women's Resource Centers.

The literature concerning Women's Resource Centers begins amid the bodies of knowledge describing the challenges women in the academy face and the parallel challenges in opening and establishing a place/space to center women. For the past three decades, the literature has described the processes of establishing Women's Resource Centers in the early 1970s and the struggles surrounding their emergence. More recent pieces describe contemporary strategies for opening Women's Resource Centers amid the closure of several decades-old centers. Furthermore, a great deal of the literature addresses the topic of organizational structures and functions. These pieces illustrate the vast heterogeneity among Women's Resource Centers, including reporting lines, previous experiences of staff and leaders, and missions and objectives. In addition, structural nuances reflect the dedication of the leaders of Women's Resource Centers to ascertaining the needs of their constituents when developing their missions and programming by conducting needs assessments of their campuses and the needs of Women's Resource Centers nationwide.

The struggles and challenges that Women's Resource Centers face are another predominant theme in the available literature. For example, the struggle to maintain adequate levels of funding and/or sponsorship for Women's Resource Centers is a significant area of emphasis for scholars and practitioners, [Page 1583]as are the challenges associated with reliance on soft monies (i.e., state/federal/private granting agencies). In addition to inadequate resources, another challenge often discussed is Women's Resource Centers having to overcome stereotypical perceptions of militant, unfriendly activists to establish credibility. This includes negotiating the millennium generation's negative or apathetic attitudes toward feminism, which may in turn explain reports of poor attendance trends at Women's Center events. Stereotypical images of Women's Resource Centers, their staff, and their purpose also contribute to the increased likelihood that Women's Resource Centers may face unsupportive administrative structures-an issue also discussed in the literature describing strategies for opening Women's Resource Centers.

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