"It just happened that at Yale there was the critical mass that was necessary," says Nancy F. Cott. chairman of the women's studies department at Yale. The groundwork for the department was laid with the first women's studies courses in 1969, just after Yale went co-educational. For the next few years, student-faculty committees met to discuss a formal program, and in 1979 a women's studies program was introduced, which was not yet able to grant degrees. Cott calls the program "something of an anomaly," but she adds. "We always saw it as heading for a major."

Cott says the emergence of this "critical mass" was crucial. "The essential feature is to have a substantial number of faculty members interested in teaching women's studies." Cott describes an academic snowballing process, in which as the program got increasing support. "The more institutional credibility it achieved." Once regular departments realized the program was going to catch on, they began to offer more courses in their own departments that would count towards a women's studies major. Cott says.

Even before the program evolved. Yale had a tradition of respecting women's studies. Students regularly applied for, and were granted, "special distributional majors" in women's studies. Cott says, adding that about a dozen students had received such special concentrations in women's studies before the creation of the major. "I don't recall any student who designed a major around women's studies and failed to get it."

Students at the University of Pennsylvania have been able to major in women's studies since 1975, according to Dr. Joan P. Shapiro, associate director of the women's studies program Shapiro says the program is a direct out growth of a sit in at College Hall in 1972 by women protesting perceived university indifference in the wake of a recent rape on campus. The protest led to the founding of the Women's Center, originally concerned only with security, which began eventually to teach courses. The women's studies program now teaches some courses of its own, and sponsors "practicums," in which students receive course credit for internships with Philadelphia women's activist group.

Although students can major solely in women's studies. Shapiro notes. "We tend to stress dual majors, because it seems to make a lot of sense." Shapiro says that contrary to images other may have of women's studies students as politically motivated or concerned only with abstractions, these students often regard women studies as pre-professional. In particular, she said many students who double major in women's studies are planing careers in gynecology or divorce law.

Although Kates says she does not necessarily see Harvard moving towards a major in women's studies, one of the tasks of the committee, since its creation in May of 1978, has been to encourage regular departments to show a greater commitment to courses in women's studies. "We hope departments will have an interest in recruiting people in one of the conventional disciplines, who also have an interest in women's studies," she says. Other than better recruitment of new faculty. Kates says a possible "second avenue" is to allow current faculty special time to study women's studies issues in the hope that they will integrate some of their learning into their courses. But even if what Cott calls a "critical mass" of women's studies scholars were to develop. Kates does not necessarily see the committee ever becoming a department or a degree-granting committee. "The committee's main goal really is to integrate. Scholarship on women should be represented in all courses."

Nevertheless, other followers of the women's studies issue at Harvard continue to urge that students here he allowed to concentrate in women's studies, even if they hope for a day when all studies will include the role of women equally. "My feeling is that as we get more courses into the curriculum and more faculty members able to teach them, it becomes possible for Harvard to perceive it as a possible concentration." Ware says. But she emphasizes that such a development will necessarily take time and dedication on the part of women's studies advocates. China concurs. "That's an ideal which I agree with," she says. "Women's studies should be a part of what everyone looks at. The fact is, it isn't like that."