we have seen for many books now that far more than a "handful" of women are capable of making gateways. I'm pretty certain that in every book since this statement we've been introduced to many women who who have the strength. Far more than 12% of the overall female channeling population are capable of making the Weave ... given Bell Curve statements from RJ and where general AS strength lies I'd venture that at least 50% of women will end up being capable of the feat.

In addition, using AS strength distribution to make this determination is beyond faulty. RJ stated that 32.5% of women are too weak to be AS, and there are bound to be at least a "handful" of women with an outlier Talent such as Androl, doubt we'll see one, but mathematically they MUST exist.

Verin is far less than 50% of maximum Female strength, you should be able to easily deduce that Egwene is fundamentally wrong in assuming that "only a handful" of women had the strength to do it ... she clearly was only looking at a very small sample of mid-tier AS women when she made the statement. As the "handful" she refers to are at LEAST as strong as Verin, and she is not too far about the Average AS strength.

Even If you assume most AS cannot make the weave work, meaning more than 1/2 of AS are between Daigian and Verin in strength and do not possess a strong enough Talent to compensate for the lack, you still have a pretty large population of women above Verin who CAN make the weave. even if only 1/4 of the total Tower + new novices are above her it's more than "a handful" and that group will only grow over time.

In fact according to the Bell Curve there must be as many women out there between Verin and Morvrin/Carlinya/Beonin as there are women between Verin and Daigain **assuming Veirin is half way between Morvrin/Carlinya/Beonin and Daigian**

Which means there are a large number of women out there who can do this, even if they aren't AS ... WO, WF, and Damane are all more truly representative than AS in terms of strength distribution (at least for Sparkers). And don't forget that Cadsuane notes that in times past Romanda/Lelaine/Elaida's strength would have been far more common among AS along with many women between Cadsuane and Moiraine. In times of Tower strength a woman like Verin would have been "middling at best" and may have even been among what they considered "weak" ...

IMO Daigian and many women above her now would not have been considered to have the requisite strength to earn the AS Title in the glory days. Personally I'd bet anyone weaker than Adeleas/Vandene or perhaps even Merilille wouldn't have been considered strong enough. But as Tower prestige dropped and recruiting lagged, we now see many levels of women who maybe shouldn't be considered strong enough.