This page is from the 1990 booklet that introduced the student body to the Greek Societies (Document SS, 53).  The Alpha Beta Phi sorority was the only single-sex female Greek Society that Bowdoin has had.  It was founded in 1983 after nineteen women decided to leave a coeducational fraternity.  They left because they felt that women received unequal treatment from the men.  They wrote in their mission statement that they existed specifically to provide a supportive and nurturing environment.  The group, including those who had been involved in fraternities, felt that they needed a space where women, not men, dominated the discourse, and where women could assume leadership roles.  They promise these things in their mission statement.  In this way the women of ABP sought to bring about some social change at Bowdoin in a way that would empower women.  Through experience they believed that this could not occur for women through the fraternity system as it existed on campus.