Women’s and Gender Center WGC History

The Amherst College Women’s and Gender Center took its first form alongside the beginning of coeducation at Amherst. The introduction of women to Amherst in 1975 forced issues around the campus’ masculine culture to the front, with some of these issues being unanticipated and unaccommodated by the college. The administration prepared for women students by creating separate dormitories, but the safety, health, and social lives of these students were not fully addressed, serving to perpetuate the isolating and unequal feeling often described by women faculty up until that point. On September 10th, 1975, a large group of new women students gathered to discuss their experiences, and quickly realized a shared desire to form an Amherst Women’s Resource Center. While some women wanted a safe space to grow together as women, others did not want to alienate male students and preferred to attempt to assimilate. Collaboratively, women at Amherst determined that the center should serve as a place for women to process their feelings and experiences together surrounding the social and political atmosphere at Amherst. Thus, the Amherst Women’s Group was founded, working to help women find space on the masculine campus. From these origins of necessity, the WGC has evolved through periods of activism and radicalism, growth and shrinkage, modernization and evolution, while grappling with issues such as sexual assault, misogyny, masculinity, and gender identity.

The WGC originated as the Amherst Women’s Group, a place of support for the women of Amherst. This support group offered film screenings, workshops, literature, and speakers, and intended to serve not just one type of woman, but as many people as possible, by representing all aspects and types of women’s issues. These early roots at times lacked an intersectional framework, but the idea of inclusion was still present based on a necessity to keep the group alive and successful. The group, located in Grosvenor Hall, served not just as a support space, but as a place of advocacy for women, with involved students pushing for better lighting on campus, alternative housing, and a full-time gynecologist. In the first few years of the group’s formation, they estimated that nearly every woman on campus participated in some capacity, as did many men. The center subscribed to feminist and women’s studies journals and brought women role models to campus. They held parties, sent out newsletters, and served as both a formal and informal place for students to gather. Towards the end of the 1970s, the Amherst Women’s Group gradually shifted into the Amherst Women’s Center. The Women’s Center was a shift away from a place primarily of support to a space of political activity and feminist action.

As the 1980s began, Amherst students began to think critically about the place of women’s issues on campus. While women’s liberation and feminist thought had been prominent for some time, Amherst College was somewhat late to the game. As the center shifted away from serving as a support space for women students and evolved into a space of advocating for women’s rights, the demographic of students who frequented the center shifted. The center became a space for feminists, which at the time was still considered a “dirty word.” Feminists were angry, man-hating, bra-burning women, and many if not most women did not want to regularly associate themselves with the ideology for fear of alienating their male peers. Many women wanted to fit in with the men on campus, and often worked to adapt themselves to the dominant masculine culture of the college. The Women’s Center was frequently mocked, with one student writing in 1979, “You won’t find any future presidents… in a Women’s Center.” The center also wasn’t highly visible, as it was often underfunded, and would have off-years of low programming based on certain student leaders graduating. During this time before the creation of the Sexuality, Women, & Gender department, there were also very few classes with gender as a focal point at Amherst, making it quite easy for students to move through Amherst without ever having to confront gender dynamics and gendered power structures. Still, the women running the Women’s Center argued for the inherent strength of women, protested the unaddressed inequalities on campus, worked to include the voices of marginalized women, and despite the odds grew in size. While facing stigma from some of the student body, the center held a “Take Back the Night” event in 1988, and worked to uplift women faculty through collaboration and celebration. In the mid-80s and annual series of events titled “Womenspeak” began, with speakers, film screenings, and workshops bringing campus-wide participation. The staff of the center increased, as did their budget, and in 1986 the Women’s Center moved to the campus center. All of this work took place within the context of a college gradually starting to grapple with issues of sexual harassment, and establishing definitions of sexual harassment for the first time in 1985.

The 1990s served as a period of self-defined “redefinition” for the center. Students decided that the center should not focus on sponsoring speakers as much as it had in the past. Instead, there was a desire for a center serving as a resource for women on campus, providing discussion groups and informal events, as well as a meeting space for multiple women’s groups on campus. In 1996, the Women’s Center created a website and forum online. The Center also continued to publish a newsletter, which in 1997 reported on 20 years of coeducation at Amherst. Most campus activism during this time centered around the safety of women students. A student proposal supported by the Women’s Center was submitted in 1993 to secure a full-time rape, abuse and sexual harassment educator, with a part-time educator having been hired in 1990. This was also a period of recognizing the racist and classist dynamics often present in feminist work of the time. In 1989 there was a workshop on white womanhood titled “Self-Education for White Women- realizing our past, working for the future.” In 1997 the annual series “Womenspeak” changed its name to “Sisterspeak” to combat the reputation the series had acquired for representing only white, straight, traditionally successful women.

Because of the structure of the Women’s Center, with it being run by volunteer students rather than a staff member and paid students, there were often years of low activity for the center. The Women’s Center was a relatively small force on campus through the early 2000s, up until Angie Epifano’s article being published in The Amherst Student on October 17, 2012. Titled “An Account of Sexual Assault at Amherst College,” she detailed not only her rape but the violence she experienced at the hands of the administration when she discussed her experience. Just two months after this article, President Biddy Martin overrode a student poll by deciding that the Women’s Center should be moved to a more prominent location in the campus center. In the summer of 2013 the Center was given a $20,000 budget and was institutionalized with Danielle Hussey as interim director. The Center also officially became the Women’s and Gender Center, despite the more popular choice being simply “Gender Center.” Through these changes the WGC’s presence on campus increased, growing alongside the Title IX office and campus-wide conversations on sexual assault. As these conversations around gender-based violence finally came out into the open, the WGC had a renewed purpose of serving as a space of support and safety for women.

In 2017 the WGC moved to a more spacious location on the second floor of the campus center to accommodate the growing number of students participating in center programming and utilizing the center informally. While institutionalization may have in some ways curbed the center’s radical work, it has allowed for a stability and scale not previously obtainable for the space, as well as a level of respect within the general student body. In recent years the WGC has placed a larger focus on intersectionality, and has worked to center the experiences of women of color. The WGC has also pushed for a greater inclusion of transgender and nonbinary people through work around deconstructing the gender binary. In 2017 the WGC and Queer Resource Center co-created the first annual Trans Empowerment Week, as well as a weekly nonbinary community hour. The idea that “men and women should be equal” is no longer a radical one on this campus, but the WGC now defines feminism with bell hooks’ words: “Feminism is a movement to end sexism, sexist exploitation, and oppression.” The understanding of patriarchal power has shifted on Amherst’s masculine campus, and the WGC has always been at the front of this shift, pushing towards a radical acceptance of feminist ideals on campus.