About

Former CSWS directors include (left to right): the late Miriam Johnson, Cheris Kamarae, Sandra Morgen, and Joan Acker (photo by Jack Liu).

A group of visionary scholars founded the Center for the Sociological Study of Women (CSSW) at the UO in 1973, on the heels of Title IX of the Education Amendments, as women’s roles in the United States and elsewhere were undergoing massive changes.

In 1983, CSSW became the much larger Center for the Study of Women in Society (CSWS), beneficiaries of a generous bequest from editor William Harris in honor of his deceased wife, the feminist editor and writer Jane Grant. The Harris-Grant endowment was at that time the biggest single gift ever awarded the UO—and it was all for the purpose of improving the status of women in society by increasing knowledge about women.

CSWS Mission

Faculty members and graduate students affiliated with the Center for the Study of Women in Society study women and gender from perspectives that emphasize the complexity of women’s lives and the intersecting nature of gender identity. Committed to sharing this research with other scholars and educators, the public, policymakers, and activists, CSWS researchers come from a broad range of fields, including anthropology, arts and architecture, business, education, history, languages, literature, music, psychology, sociology, and women’s and gender studies.