What is women's studies? Is it a discipline? A subject? What should a women's studies programme connote and what obtains in practice? Through a survey, this paper attempts to map the different aspects of the women's studies programme in institutions of higher education of Tamil Nadu. The contention of the paper is that the forms and conditions of the institutionalisation of women's studies in places of higher education to a large extent constrained the possibilities of carrying out research in this area as an academic discipline. The paper has important implications for bodies such as the University Grants Commission that, at one level, have been in the forefront of the institutionalisation of the women's studies movement in India, particularly in the 1990s, but, at another level, have failed to achieve the kinds of intellectual and political changes promised by the founders of this discipline in India.