Woman GSAS Students To Fight for Equal Jobs

Fourteen women graduate students have created the Graduate Women's Organization at Harvard, which will work for equal job opportunities for women in University faculties.

"I anticipate that we won't have any trouble working up to a fairly large group," Ann Michelini, a graduate student in Classics and co-chairman of the organization, said, "and we plan to decentralize right away into a number of task forces on different problems."

As its first project for the Fall, the steering committee of the organization plans to visit every department chairman in the Graduate School of Arts and Sciences to discuss practices in hiring and job recommendations. They also plan to work with Radeliffe students on the question of manger and a one-to-one ratio of women to men undergraduates.

Letters

In August the steering committee sent a letter to every female graduate student in the GSAS describing the organization's purposes and plans.

An cutgrowth of the graduate subcommittee of the Women's Faculty Group, it described itself in the letter as "an organization of professional women dedicated to the advancement of women in the academic world."

At their first open meeting on Oct. 6, they will discuss some of their main concerns at Harvard:

elimination of "stereo-typed conceptions of women's role and capabilities";

guarantees of equal pay for women;

equal consideration of men and women for jobs and promotions;

establishment of child-care facilities;

abolition of "rules against nepotism" (i.e., the barring of a husband and wife from employment as tenured members of the same department or university).

Faculty Committee

Three members of the organization will be working with the Faculty Committee on the Status of Women, named jast June by Dean Dunlop. The committee, of which Caroline Bynum, assistant professor of History, and Michael Walzer, professor of Government, are co-chairmen, will hold open hearings this fall and distribute questionnaires to male and female graduate students and alumni.

The organization will work with other women's groups which have already begun combating alleged bias in university hiring practices. This spring the Women's Equity Action League filed a "class action" suit against hundreds of universities in the U.S., charging them with sex discrimination in hiring, salary determinations, and promotional practices.

The Boston chapter of the National Organization of Women (NOW) filed a supporting suit specifically aimed at Harvard. An investigation by the Department of Health, Education and Welfare (HEW) looked into their charges but has not yet released official findings.

Harvard is now trying to work out an acceptable "affirmative action" plan for the hiring of under-represented groups, including blacks and women. If Harvard and HEW cannot reach an agreement, the federal government's ultimate weapon would be to withhold about $60 million in federal funds.

Present Statistics

According to the American Association of University Professors, only 22 per cent of all faculty members are women, and most of these are clustered at women's colleges and at the bottom of the tenure structure.

Nationally, only nine per cent of women faculty members are professors, while 25 per cent of men hold that rank. Thirty five per cent of women are instructors, the lowest rung on the academic ladder, while only 16 per cent of the men hold this rank.

At Harvard, only two women are full professors in the Faculty of Arts and Sciences, and one of these was appointed during the summer.