Sarah Doyle Women's Center

The Sarah Doyle Women’s Center has been in operation since 1975, as a result of a proposal the year before by the Working Group on the Status of Women, a coalition of 25 students, faculty, administrators and employees, who wanted a center where women of all ages could come together to discuss women’s issues. It has provided a meeting place for a number of women’s groups, including three undergraduate groups, Women of Brown United, which had earlier operated a Women’s Center at 96 Waterman Street, the Socialist Feminist Caucus and the Women’s Caucus, as well as Women Graduate Students and Gay Women of Brown. Named in honor of the prominent nineteenth-century woman educator, the center offers a variety of services, lectures, discussions, films and forums relating to women’s issues, as well as maintaining a library of feminist scholarship, and a gallery which each year mounts eight to ten exhibits, often works of local women artists. The house at 185 Meeting Street was left to Pembroke by Mary H. Parsons and was first occupied in 1966 as the Alumnae House, home of the Pembroke Alumnae Association.