The Oxford Women's Centre was set up in 1984 and was situated at 35-37 Cowley Road, Cowley, Oxford. It was used as a centre for local women.
The Women's Centre had a café and a crèche, and many women's groups in Oxford met at the Centre. The centre was partly supported by Oxford City Council, but relied primarily on its own fund-raising activities, donations, and rent from groups using parts of the building. Amongst others, groups that met in the women's centre including the community workers support group, a discussion group, a writing group, new student lesbian group, Oxford Women and Ireland group, lesbian mothers group, women's archive, healing room, rape crisis, women and homeless group, and the claimant's union women's group.
Numerous courses were held at the women's centre, such as assertiveness training and bicycle repair workshops. A women's night bus service was also operated for a while on Friday and Saturday nights. A Rape Crisis phone line, and a Lesbian phone line were set up and operated from the women's centre to provide information and support.
The Women's Centre had close links with UHURA Wholefoods, a women's collective, situated at 48 Cowley Road, Cowley, Oxford.
The Oxford Women's magazine, Lilith, was set up in 1982, and eventually had an office at the Women's Centre in which to produced the magazine.
The Oxford Women's Centre was re-named the Oxford Women's Community Centre in 1988. The Centre had to close in 1991 due to lack of funding.
This catalogue is divided into three sections:
1 - Oxford Women's Centre
2 - Lilith, the Oxford Women's Paper
3 - UHURU
The records in this collection were deposited in December 1991 as accession 3353, and catalogued in January 2003 by Jenny Childs.