ABSTRACT
The growth and development of Women's Studies courses have been a fairly recent phenomenon and it is difficult to be sure just how much activity is going on. The emergence of Women's Studies has been a direct consequence of the re-emergence of feminism and the growth and development of the women's movement during the last two decades. The construction of male-centred knowledge has, of course, been the product of political and social conflict as well as resistance and suppression. The construction of male-centred knowledge has also taken place in the context of unequal economic resources and vastly different social conditions between races and classes of men. Freer from the constraints of qualifications and academic regulations, adult education has proved a much more sympathetic and appropriate base for the introduction and experimentation implied by Women's Studies. The problem with most liberal adult education since the Second World War is that it has concentrated on satisfying intellectual needs alone.
