1. Building a female context and environment: The women rented an old community theatre building off-campus, which they remodeled to suit their needs. This gave them the opportunity to build a separate place which they controlled and in which they could evaluated themselves and their experiences without defensiveness and male interference. They also learned vital building and organizing skills and became a strong cohesive group.
2. Female role models: Women have always lacked positive female models in educational institutions. Role models were supplied by Judy Chicago and by research and reading in female art history, mythology, literature and culture.
3. Permission to be themselves and encouragement to make art out of their own experience as women: This opened up a whole new world of possibilities to the students and paved the way for a new feminist art. Although much of what was happening in the Program was as new to Chicago as it was to the students, she performed a leading and vital role by making great demands on them and setting the aspirations for achievement very high. 
Since the Program was the first of its kind anywhere in the country, the women felt a special sense of risk and importance and a freedom from history, which made them adventurous in their experimentation.
Thirty years later, the activities and discoveries of the Fresno Feminist Program are still an inspiration to those who hear about them. Its importance in the pioneering of feminist art education and art making is firmly established in the history of the women’s art movement. The preceding information is from the book By Our Own Hands, The History of the Women Artist’s Movement in Southern California, 1970-1976 by Faith Wilding, published by Double Inc., Santa Monica, California, 1977.