A TIME article on a small, but growing network of conservative college women.

How to deal with the rise of NeW is on the agenda at this week’s National Women’s Studies Association Conference. On Thursday, a panel will discuss how traditionally liberal campus women’s centers can respond to conservative women and NeW in particular.

But there’s not much they can do that would faze Agness. She has received her fair share of hate mail, and in September 2004, a UVA student newsmagazine published an article about the fledgling organization, complete with artwork. Recalls Agness, "On the cover they ran an illustration of a woman dressed in a perfectly ironed pristine shirt with a checkered apron, connected to a machine with 12 babies popping out while stirring her batter and reading her recipe with the headline ‘Manifest Domesticity.’

"We were really portrayed as baby-making machines, and at that point I knew we were onto something. We were a threat."