Center for the Study of Women in Society

The Center for the Study of Women in Society (CSWS) at the University of Oregon in the United States supports feminist research, teaching, activism and creativity. Established in 1973, it is a non-profit partnership between the Associated Students of the University of Oregon Women's Center and the University. According to the Handbook of Gender, Work, and Organization, CSWS is "a major feminist center for scholarship on gender and women".

A 1970 study, "The Status of Women at the University of Oregon", reported that women represented only 10.5% of full-time, 9-month teaching faculty. According to Joan Acker, one of the faculty writing the study, they requested the university develop an affirmative action plan. The plan was only developed, however, after the passage of Title IX in 1972, when it was required of institutions accepting US$50,000 or more in federal aid.

At that time, a small Women's Research and Study Center was funded by a research grant from the Office of Scholarly Research in the Graduate School. Despite statewide budget cuts to education funding, the university supported a women's congress called Women on the Move during the last half of June 1972. The congress "helped energize feminists of all kinds at the University to push for greater change in the decade to come", and led to a proposal for an interdisciplinary women's studies center at the University. The Graduate School required the interdisciplinary proposal to be approved by all departments in the College of Arts and Sciences, but only the Sociology department responded affirmatively.

Thus in 1973, university president Robert D. Clark supported Acker and other faculty in founding the Center for the Sociological Study of Women; its initial budget was approved for three years, amounting to US$5,244 annually, and was "woefully underfunded" for its first decade. Acker became its first director. Acker remembered an early research project with Miriam (Mimi) Johnson, a "Feminism Scale". In a tribute to Johnson she wrote, "The question that correlated most highly with who was most likely to identify with feminism was 'do you shave your legs?' We had a good laugh over that."