Awareness Week ’78

The Women’s League eventually changed its name into the Association for Women’s Students. They held an event called Awareness Week throughout that  focused on male and female relations on campus.

Warren Farrell, a prominent fixture in the women’s movement held a consciousness-raising weekend where the objective was to improve female/male and same sex communication. One activity that was available included diary writing, where participants could record their insights and fears relating to the observation of power relationships between men and women. I’ll post some pics below!

Women’s League at Western

There were a ton of documents dedicated to the Women’s League (I’m talking boxes). I took a couple of weeks to look through it all and I feel as if I barely scratched the surface. The League originated in 1914, and the members were every woman on Western’s campus. The freshmen were given handbooks, possibly to ease the transition from home to school and make them feel welcome. There were a lot of rules, even a guide on what is appropriate to wear to certain campus events. It may be because of the time period that there were rules on how to dress, and that there were strict curfew rules.

It’s cool to see that this organization welcomed the freshmen ladies as soon as they stepped on campus. The smaller size of the college probably made the process easier. There are a few organizations on campus dedicated to groups of women coming together for fellowship, but it would be nice to possibly have a similar group on campus in the future offering some sort of initiation for women students from the GWS department.