The Club was created in 1951 by American military wives living in southwest France. At that time it was called the Bordeaux Officers’ Wives’ Club. In the 1950s there were some 20 American military camps in southwest France, where around 60,000 US personnel were stationed.

The main goal of the club was to seek a way to welcome new arrivals to France, by providing recreation and entertainment and promoting social development. With the encouragement of the American and French governments, the club evolved and soon aimed to encourage contact and friendships between American and French women.

When the US troops left France in the late 1960s, the club was renamed the American Women’s Club. It soon began welcoming English-speaking women of all nationalities, and the name was changed again to Bordeaux Women’s Club (BWC) to reflect the increasing international membership. During the 1970s and 1980s, several large US companies such as IBM, Esso and Ford established subsidiaries in the Bordeaux area where American engineers or technicians were employed. Their wives were happy to join the BWC to meet other English speaking women. At that time, international phone calls were expensive and the Internet was unheard of, so it was difficult to maintain regular communication with their families and the BWC provided the means to have regular contact with English speakers.