Committee Urges University to Hire More Women

The Committee on the Status of Women in the Faculty of Arts and Sciences, which found the number of women in the Faculty "disgracefully small," has urged Harvard to adept new recruitment guidelines and new career patterns designed to facilitate the hiring of more women.

In its report released this week, the Committee calls Harvard "a male bastion for more than three centuries [which] has been slow to recognize changes in ideas about sex roles" and "tended to overlook injustices." The report continues, "But we have now reached that point which usually precedes significant change, when the injustice is so visible and the discontent so apparent that few can doubt the need for reform."

The Committee. under the co-chairmanship of Caroline W. Bynum, assistant professor of History, and Michael L. Walzer, professor of Government, proposes that the Faculty strive for a percentage of women in the non-tenured ranks equal to the percentage of women receiving Ph.D.'s from Harvard ten years ago (9.6 per cent in 1959-60) and a percentage of women in the non-tenured ranks equal to the percentage of women receiving Ph.D,'s from Harvard today (19 percent in 1968-69).

Not Quotas

According to the report, these guide lines, which would fluctuate as the percentage of women with Harvard Ph.D.'s changes, do not aim at a "quota system." The report says, "We regard it as perfectly compatible with our guidelines that in every particular case excellence and not sex (or race or age) should be the only criterion for academic employment."

The Committee also recommends that departments create a limited number of part-time faculty appointments in order to "adapt academic career patterns to the realities of life for some women and some men." It hopes part-time teaching would offer a viable alternative to those women who wish to remain in a "community of scholars" or do research while caring for their children.

The Committee also proposes a Permanent Committee on Women to survey periodically the status of women at Harvard and suggest ways of increasing the number of women on the faculty. It recommends further that all faculty members be entitled to unpaid maternity leave.

In its report, the Committee makes several proposals concerning women graduate students who are "present in sizeable numbers and are equal members of the Harvard community," but who, "like women on the faculty, do encounter prejudice at Harvard."

The Committee propose:

That new opportunities for part-time study should be made available to students enrolled in the Graduate School, providing the student takes at least two courses per term.

That graduate women should be allowed to take up two full years of maternity leave during their graduate careers.

That graduate women should have equal access to Harvard employment opportunities, to graduate student housing at all cost levels and at all locations, and to all athletic facilities.

Althought the Committee makes no formal recommendations concerning undergraduate women, it does state the view "that women should be admitted for undergraduate study, as they are admitted to the Graduate School, in tree and open competition, and with no institutional arrangements like these presently in force-which amount in effect to a quota system."

Speaking of needs common to women at all levels of University life, the Committee proposes that the University Health Services hire enough gynecologists to provide for the health needs of women at Harvard. The report says, "We should have thought it a matter of ordinary courtesy, once women were admitted to University membership, to provide them with a form of medical care so particularly necessary to them."

The Committee, which began its work in April 1970 is planning to present three pieces of legislation at the Faculty meeting on May 18. According to Bynum, the Committee will ask for a Faculty vote on part-time teaching and part-time study as well as a general endorsement of the findings and conclusions of the report as a whole.