AAUW-Owensboro is a branch of the national organization American Association of University Women (AAUW). AAUW is the nation’s leading voice promoting equity and education for women and girls. Since our founding in 1881, AAUW members have examined and taken positions on the fundamental issues of the day — educational, social, economic, and political.

Read on for details about our branch. For more on the national organization, go to https://www.aauw.org.

Our founding in 1954

Click the graphic above to read about how we got our start!

A group of very progressive women met in October of 1953 to consider forming a branch of AAUW in Owensboro. These included women from the community (teachers, school administrators and a lawyer) and faculty and staff from Kentucky Wesleyan College. The groundwork they laid resulted in Owensboro AAUW being granted a charter from AAUW in February 1954. Since that time, our branch has been involved in a variety of projects resulting in increased awareness of issues of equity.

We’ve been doing “get out the vote” campaigns and candidate forums since the early ‘60’s; investigated Title IX compliance in the ‘80’s, facilitated training on acquaintance rape in the mid ‘80’s, conducted a child care needs study in 1990 and started the Conversations on Race in collaboration with the Daviess County Public Library, the Owensboro Ministerial Association and the Owensboro Human Relations Commission.  Our collaboration with Girls Inc. began with Eleanor Roosevelt birthday celebrations and has grown to include commemoration of Women’s Equality Day and Women’s History Month.