Women's Press and Printing School
by Susan Stryker, Director, GLBT Historical Society
One of the goals of the feminist movement of the early 1970s was to give
women who had been denied employment due to lack of marketable skills the
opportunity to learn a traditionally male trade. In the days before desk-top
publishing and the Internet made information relatively more easy to produce
and distribute, it was especially important for women who wanted to spread
their feminist message to learn the printing trade. It was a vital strategy
for "controlling the means of production" and gaining access to print for
a point of view that was often excluded from mainstream media.
The Women's Press and Printing School was formed in 1984 from the merger of
two ealier projects. The first of these was the Women's Press Project, which
started in 1974 in the Mission district of San Francisco as part of a
nonprofit women's vocational school at the Women's Skills Center. It became
a collective in 1976, run at first by volunteer labor and later by a paid
staff. Its main purpose was to teach women printing skills in an environment
free of sexism. They gradually took on commerical printing jobs to support
themselves, and in 1980 became a business as well as a school. Most of the
print jobs were for customers involved in feminist and leftist political work.
Up Press, the other party to the merger, was formed in 1972 by the People's
Union in Redwood City, California. It was a collectively run "movement" press
that printed political and feminist work, and became a women's press in 1974.
The joint venture closed in January 1987 due to financial difficulties -- many
of them associated with the rise of new electronic print capabilities --
and the departure of several longtime members.
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