The introduction of Britain's first-ever post-graduate degree course in women's studies at Kent University later this year represents a major breakthrough in the campaign to get the feminist perspective officially incorporated into the academic curriculum.
Women's studies occupies a unique position in higher education because it is being forced gradually on to the academic community by strong outside pressure in the form of the recent wave of feminism. This use of a major social and political movement to change the academic curriculum is without precedent.
The theoretical approach adopted in women's studies courses represents a major shift in perception which attempts to make up for the neglect of the role of women and women's interests, whether explicit or implicit, in traditional subject areas.
Also a growing subject in its own right, it can be seen as a reflection of women's curiosity about their past and present and of the increasing awareness of female achievement. It depends on a feminist understanding of the relationship between the sexes, which emphasizes women's disadvantaged and unequal position in society compared with that of men, and expresses the desire to change it.
Women's studies is linked closely with the growth of academic research which works out a feminist perspective in traditional disciplines such as science, history, literature, sociology, economics, politics and anthropology.
The past 10 years of the women's movement has seen a mushrooming of women's studies courses in the adult education sector and as an option at undergraduate level within the social sciences.
In adult education the emphasis tends to be on informal discussion groups where there are no strictly fixed distinctions between tutors and students. The options in universities and colleges take a more standard approach of looking at the role of women through the traditional subject areas and cover topics like women in industrial society, women in history, women in literature, women and psychology or women and science.
The major difference between these and the proposed one-year postgraduate MA degree course at Kent is that its founding marks the first time women's studies has been formally acknowledged as a subject in its own right.
The course is being coordinated by sociology lecturer Dr Mary Evans, who scored another first in the academic world last year by being appointed director of women's studies within the social sciences faculty.
Although she is given time off from her existing teaching load to organize the new course as well as an undergraduate option and an extra-curricular women's studies seminar, she receives no extra salary for her added responsibilities.
An important aspect of the new course is that it is interdisciplinary. Dr Evans heads a team of 10 women and men, who include an economist, lawyer, social psychologist, sociologist, social anthropologist and a lecturer in social policy and administration.
In lectures, seminars and supervisions they will teach 12 students who will be assessed by a combination of essays and a dissertation. There will be no examinations.
All the students must take the core course, "The theory and development of feminism", which will deal with the history of feminism, the position of women in industrial and non-industrial societies and the ideological construction of femininity.
They must also choose between two and four courses from a list including women and Islam, women and the labour market, women, crime and the legal system, equality and the law, the feminist aesthetic, biology and the woman question, the philosophical assumptions of feminism, the intellectual origins of feminism and women and the welfare state.
Throughout the course, the emphasis is placed primarily on the recurring question of whether or not feminism constitutes an academic discipline and whether there is a feminist way of looking at and interpreting the social world.
It is careful, however, not to try and give a single answer because feminism approaches the question of inequality in two very different ways.
On the one hand the radical feminists argue that women are essentially different from men and that social differences or inequality result in an undervaluing of female activities and characteristics.
On the other hand socialist feminists, who are supported by Dr Evans, argue that although social differences may exist women are essentially no different from men and in a differently structured society divisions would disappear, leaving an equal society based neither on sex nor class.
Setting up the MA in women's studies has proved difficult in the face of well-presented arguments. Already in 1975 the move to set up the undergraduate option "Women in society" had generated a considerable amount of hostility from fellow academics in the male-dominated social sciences faculty.
In spite of the fact that this undergraduate course attracts large numbers of students, the plans to set up an MA nearly got thrown out at the first hurdle - the faculty's planning and development committee.
"There was an enormous amount of hostility", said Dr Evans. "I think some men thought we would proselytize and change women into discontented wives and mothers. The more real criticism was whether women's studies constitutes a subject or not and whether it has got intellectual respectability."
The course was also criticized for not including examinations, although two existing courses were already based solely on continuous assessment. There was further discussion about the books on the reading list. Were they purely academic or just polemical?
Although the course has now passed successfully through the planning and development committee and the faculty board and only awaits ratification by the university senate, its biggest difficulty will be finding adequate funding. This is in the light of a cutback by the Social Science Research Council on grants for one year postgraduate courses and a shift in emphasis towards management studies.
"This is a complete stumbling block", admits Dr Evans. "We are either going to have to take part-time students over two years or appeal for private money."
Because the course intends to prepare students for employment in trade unions, Government departments and political organizations as well as institutions dealing with predominantly female personnel, Dr Evans hopes they will consider sponsorship.
If the organizers overcome these obstacles and manage to proceed with the MA in women's studies, it should provide a valuable opportunity for women to develop feminist theory in an academic context.
It is arguable of course that a women's studies course like this is in itself discriminatory because it puts special emphasis on women and counter-productive because it perpetuates the idea that women are a separate category.
However, it is widely accepted in the movement that some positive discrimination is necessary, although British feminists are anxious to avoid some of the pitfalls encountered in the United States where the founding of separate women's studies departments has led to the feeling that women are being studied in isolation from the rest of society.
Perhaps the ultimate aim should be to make women's studies courses redundant and campaign for the feminist perception to be absorbed into the mainstream of academic culture.
Dr Evans says: "The next step is to abandon women's studies as such and go forward to a non-sex view of the world in all academic subjects. We are not keen on having compulsory women's studies courses, but want the ideal which is taking it for granted in any course, whatever it is about, that the experience of women is included."
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