UI Women’s Center Notes Anniversary For 25 Years, It’s Fought For Women’s Issues

When the University of Idaho Women’s Center opened its doors in 1972, it was part of a national wave of attention to women’s issues such as salary equity and equal educational opportunities.

Twenty-five years later, most of those issues still are around, and the Women’s Center continues working to address them.

In many people’s eyes, 1972 was “the year of the woman.” The U.S. Senate sent the Equal Rights Amendment to the states for ratification, Title IX was enacted, Ms. magazine premiered and the FBI swore in its first female officers.

It also was the year the UI Women’s Center opened in a small office in the Administration Building, part of a deal brokered between the university and the Idaho Human Rights Commission after a female employee filed a complaint with the state.

To assuage disgruntled female faculty and staff members over their low pay, the school agreed to improve services for all women on campus, including students, and the affirmative action office and Women’s Center were formed.

In its 25th anniversary year, visitors can explore a time line of the center’s activities over the last quarter-century and examine a number of historical artifacts relevant to the women’s movement on the UI campus and around the country.

According to Susan Palmer, education programming coordinator at the center, female students made up only about 33 percent of the UI student body in 1972, and the university had problems keeping women in school once they had started. At one time, the dropout rate among women was nearly 50 percent, and creation of the center was one way the school tried to reverse that trend.

“The school realized there may be special needs for female students,” Palmer said. “We help them with the tools they need to stay in.”

The center has expanded its programs and services extensively to meet those needs since 1972. Women now make up 46 percent of enrolled students.

Weekly lectures are held on a variety of topics of interest to both men and women. A Women’s Center newsletter, which has 1,500 subscribers, is published six times a year to keep the community in tune with center activities.

The center’s library, with more than 1,400 books and scholarly journals, is open to all students. And the lounge in the center acts as a haven and home away from home for many female students looking for a comfortable place to study or become acclimated to campus life.

Perhaps the most vital services the center provides are its educational program on gender-based violence such as rape, sexual assault and sexual harassment and its crisis intervention program offering support to victims and families of such crimes.

Valerie Russo, the Women’s Center sexual assault prevention education program adviser, teaches classes to students to help them change attitudes among their peers.

She also offers classes on the social and legal aspects of acquaintance rape and has customized programs for everyone from junior high through university students on topics ranging from female body images and eating disorders to date rape.

Russo estimates she has conducted about 100 presentations for community and student groups in the last year.

Providing crisis services and guidance is an important role of the center as it responds to the needs of women on campus to keep them in school, according to Palmer.

“We’ve recognized a relative national prominence of sexual assault as one of the forces driving women students out of college,” she said.

The center has had its share of controversy over the years.

Palmer says, however, the center should remain in its spot in the old journalism building, where it has been located since 1974, for another few years at least.