The wave of the study of women which led directly into the formation of the new discipline called women’s studies started in the 1960s in the Middle East and the United States concurrently. A generation earlier, foreshadowing the creation of the new field, Zahiyya Dughan, a Lebanese delegate to the Arab Women’s Conference in Cairo in 1944, called upon Arab universities to accord the intellectual and literary heritage of Arab women a place in the curriculum by creating chairs for the study of women’s writings. By now, at the end of the 1980s, women’s studies as a distinct field has found legitimacy in the academy. In the United States there are women’s studies programs in all major colleges and universities—more than sixty graduate programs offer M.A.’s and Ph.D.’s—and fifty major research centers, most of which are attached to universities. The National Women’s Studies Association (NWSA) and the Middle East Studies Association equally claim some three thousand members. However, the study of women remains marginal within Middle East studies, while women’s studies still remain largely centered on the West.
Women's studies curriculum development: A view from the United States
