Meeting Highlights Problems Of Women in Hiring, Careers

A University-wide committee of women faculty and staff sponsored a conference last Saturday highlighting the problems in hiring and promotion, as well as career and personal life, facing women at Harvard today.

A panel of alumnae discussed the changes at Harvard over the years.

"I think it's an unfinished revolution because we still need more women faculty," Barbara M. Solomon '40, senior lecturer in History of American Civilization, said1fShe added that the curriculum should be enlarged to include courses that concern women.

Rebecca Flewelling, assistant to the President of Radcliffe, moderated a workshop on hiring and promotion of women at Harvard.

"We're holding this panel because Harvard is an institution that as of 1979 does not recognize women as a first-class institution," Flewelling said.

Adelaide Jones, placement director at the Kennedy School of Government, said she learned while trying to get a job after college that "women don't make decisions about their careers--they make decisions about jobs."

She said she frequently found that women are not chosen for upper level positions at their jobs no matter how long they work. "We're simply around to break in the boss," she added.

"They also say you're here because of affirmative action and that's great, but people have a way of making affirmative action seem very negative," Jones said.

Up, Up, and Away

In a panel entitled "More Women at Harvard," Margaret E. Law, registrar of the Faculty, said the number of women concentrators in the social sciences are increasing.

Ursula Wagener, assistant dean for academic affairs at the School of Education, said that although women comprise 58 per cent of the students at the School, very few women hold significant positions. Women hold four out of 21 tenured faculty positions at the Ed School.

Susan M. Bailey, director of the Office of Institutional Policy Research on Women's Education, said her office has begun a survey of women in most of the graduate schools "to get a sense of what happens after graduate school."

Harvard or Radcliffe?

Law said she feels "Harvard has accepted women as students but not Radcliffe." She added that because of coeducation some Radcliffe offices have moved to Harvard, and that there are fewer women as House masters.

Solomon said the scarcity of women faculty makes it difficult to find women House masters, since masters must be tenured faculty.