"If I really wanted to say men can't come, I would have to go to the dean and explain why I thought [it] was necessary [to limit access], knowing that it would expose us to non-compliance," Munafo says.

Thus, Dartmouth has a counseling program for victims of sexual abuse, open only to women.

But Munafo says women's groups have been hesitant to ask for the dean's exemption. A dinner discussion group that once allowed only female table guests went co-ed with the new policy, with only bare minimum of grumbling.

Munafo says the women who grappled with that decision emerged with an entirely new perspective.

"Is it really about sexual difference or is it about political difference?" she asks. "Is it that there are men who we would rather not be distracting us? It's a learning experience, dealing with people who disagree with us."

Legally Conscious

Even Brown University, subject of one of the most highly publicized Title IX lawsuits in recent memory, has been slow to apply the law to all-female educational programs.

In 1991, female athletes accused Brown of violating Title IX when the school tried to eliminate women's gymnastics and volleyball programs. After six years of legal wrangling which took them all the way to the Supreme Court, courts ordered Brown to keep the number of women compared to men involved in sports within 3.5 percent of the ratio of women to men in the undergraduate population.