New Women's Center in PBH To Offer Workshops, Speakers

A new women's center for Radcliffe undergraduates, graduate students, employees, faculty wives and other women affiliated with the University will open this fall at Phillips Brooks House.

The center, unofficially called the Harvard-Radcliffe Women's Center, will coordinate efforts with the National Organization for Women, Women Employed at Harvard, the Office of Women's Education, Radcliffe Union of Students and the Office for Graduate and Career Plans and other women's organizations, Shanta Driver '75, vice president on the executive committee of PBH, said yesterday.

Overdue Need

"We have long felt the need for a women's center at the University to try to improve things for all of us," Delda White, director of publications for Radcliffe, said yesterday.

Plans for the center include conducting workshops on women-related issues, forming study groups on health careers and abortion rights, and sponsoring speakers. Pulitzer Prize winner Maxine Kumin has already agreed to speak at the center.

The center will also try to influence University hiring and admission policies for women and attempt to prevent future passage of conservative abortion laws, Driver said yesterday.

In addition, topics for discussion at the center will include the Harvard-Radcliffe non-merger merger, coordination of women's groups in the Harvard Houses and problems of being a woman at Harvard.

"You have to realize that Harvard is a very masculine place," Driver said, "and women have to assimilate into the mainstream of maleness. I'd like to involve women in new community programs which are oriented to women's needs such as doing pregnancy counseling or working with welfare mothers to start day-care centers."