Sarah Doyle Center for Women and Gender records (OF-1ZSA-1)

Biographical/Historical Note

The Sarah Doyle Center for Women and Gender, formerly known as the Sarah Doyle Women's Center, was established at Brown University in 1974. The student group, Women of Brown United, proposed a women's center in response to the merger of Brown with Pembroke College, the women's college at Brown. They named the Center after Sarah Doyle who was the first woman to receive an honorary degree from Brown in 1894. Doyle also led the campaign to admit women to Brown, a campaign that raised the money to build Pembroke Hall, the first permanent building of the Brown Women's College.

Today, the mission of the Sarah Doyle Center for Women and Gender is to engage the campus community through a feminist praxis of activism and academics. The center provides programs, resources, and meeting space for any member of the campus community interested in examining issues around gender, especially as it intersects with other markers of identity.

The Sarah Doyle Center for Women and Gender strives to cultivate community across difference and inspire critical dialogue and collective movement-making. Their vision is to create a world without sexism and misogyny, as well as other oppressions. They work to assure that people who enter their doors are affirmed in their humanity and are inspired to create a more just world. Intersectionality, a term developed primarily by Black feminists, is key to contemporary feminist work, and it is key to the work of the Sarah Doyle Center.