DEPORTING on the activities of militant groups is never an easy task. Correspondents, no matter how concerned, are generally suspect as minions of the so-called "Establishment." Nevertheless, in the hope that they could gain an understanding of their subjects that no man could, TIME drew widely on its large group of women staffers to gather material for this week's cover story on Kate Millett and the Women's Liberation movement. In most instances it turned out to be a rewarding assignment. "Kate Millett and the others I saw really do treat other women as sisters, trying to help them. They were kind, thoughtful and cooperative," says Ruth Mehrtens Galvin, who led the reporting team.

Working with Ruth in New York were Researchers Lu Anne Aulepp, Linda Young, Anne Constable, Marion Knox, Deborah Murphy, Mary Kelley, Amanda Macintosh, Margie Michaels and Mary Themo, and Correspondent Jill Krementz.

For the better part of a week, TIME'S team interviewed women representing every shade of militancy. Meanwhile, Alice George worked to gather the necessary pictures for the project. From the field, further material was provided by Washington Correspondent Bonnie

Angelo and Los Angeles' Eleanor Hoover, who was moved to write:

"I thought of all the generations of women who had such dreams for their lives, but had given them up. I thought of the trauma when my own daughter was born, the battles she would have to fight. Perhaps the cycle will end one day."

All of which is not to say that TIME'S menfolk were consigned to the bench. Male correspondents across the U.S. added to the reportage. The cover story and ac companying features, we believe, are a happy example of male-female collaboration, having been written by Bob McCabe and B.J. Phillips, who despite the initials is very much a lady.

The World section this week, in a major story and four pages of color photographs, examines another sort of Women's Liberation: the rapid rise of African women to positions of prominence in many emerging nations. The reporting was largely the work of Correspondent James Wilde, who took his wife along on many of his journeys -- "not that she didn't trust me. I simply needed her feminine intuition to help under stand my subject. African women are very elusive."

The Cover: Portrait in oil of Kate Millett by Alice Neel.

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