Santa Cruz Business and Professional Women's Club.

Organizational History

In every decade since its founding, the Business & Professional Women/USA has been actively involved in key issues that affect women, starting with helping women gain the right to vote in 1920. The organization then continued to grow by opposing laws that denied jobs to married women in the '30s, supporting women in the Armed Forces in the '40s, working for civil rights in the '50s and '60s, and influencing landmark legislation (including Title IX) in the '70s, Retirement Equity in the '80s, and Family Medical Leave in the '90s. Today the BPW/USA is in a position to lead a public policy charge to achieve workplace equity and work-life balance, while promoting equity for all women in the workplace through advocacy, education and information. With its 30,000 members in 1600 local organizations represented in every congressional district in the country, BPW/USA is the leading advocate on work-life balance and workplace equity issues. Local BPW organizations provide members with professinal development programs, networking, participation in grassroots activism, and opportunities to support scholarships for disadvantaged women.

The Santa Cruz Business & Professional Women's Club, organized in 1928, is the oldest and largest club in the area. In fact the Santa Cruz Club organized the area's other two clubs; the San Lorenzo Valley BPWC in 1944 and the Socaptos (Soquel, Capitola, Aptos) BPWC in 1948. Earlier it had helped form the Watsonville BPWC.

Since it's beginning, the Santa Cruz BPW has taken an active role in civic affairs. Some examples include lobbying successfully to prevent an admission fee to Big Basin State Park, furnishing the first room in the Civic Auditorium when it was built, spearheading the Santa Cruz city "Birthday parties" and also introducing the Small Business Clinic in California.

With an eye to the future, the Santa Cruz BPW purchased it's first clubhouse. This clubhouse was, however, destroyed in the floods of the late 1950s. With re-development funds, insurance money, and a bit of fund raising, a new piece of land was bought. There the Club built a new clubhouse in the early 1960s. This clubhouse served as a source of income for the local chapter and provided a meeting place for many of Santa Cruz's various women's organizations, from the SCBPW themselves to the Native Daughters of the Golden West and the Soroptimists. However, in 2000 the current membership of the Santa Cruz Business & Professional Women's Club decided they no longer needed a private clubhouse and sold the property in order to benefit one of the club's favorite causes, education. With the proceeds of the sale, the Santa Cruz Business & Professional Women's Club members gave a gift of $200,000 to the University of California, Santa Cruz to endow an annual Leadership Opportunity Award (LOA) scholarship in the club's name. This gift will enable UCSC to provide $10,000 each year to a female student selected to receive a LOA scholarship.

From the guide to the Santa Cruz Business and Professional Women's Club Records, 1919-1985, (University of California, Santa Cruz. University Library. Special Collections and Archives)