Women Not Full Partners After 25 Years of H&R Marriage

Fifty years after Harvard men and Radcliffe women began to study in the same classrooms and 25 years after the Houses became co-residential, Fair Harvard remains a distinctly male institution.

Eliot house has less scotch and fewer cigars, and at 48.5 percent, the College's incoming class boasts the highest percentage of females Harvard has ever seen. In fact, on a student level a relatively full integration has taken place, with the exception of the all-male final clubs.

But they are illustrative of a larger point: Harvard has a long way to go until it can boast an atmosphere that is not just open to women, but more substantially, welcoming as well. As we gather today to send a new class into the world, we urge all those who care about Harvard';s future to take an active role in making Harvard a better place: first by recognizing that women are not fully integrated into this University, and then by pushing for change.

One of the biggest problems concerning women at Harvard is the rate at which the female Faculty are tenured. Despite the significant improvement made in the first five years of President Neil L. Rudenstine's administration (24 percent of all tenured appointments have gone to women), the fact remains that since 1991, the percentage of senior women on the Faculty has only increased from 9.6 percent to 11.5 percent, an annual rate of change of less than 0.4 percent. At this rate, it would take almost 55 years for the fraction of tenured women at FAS to reach one-third.

With the capital campaign theoretically raising enough money to create 90 new Faculty positions, right now is the time to encourage progress and goad it along with vocal support and the weapon that strikes Harvard's heel: money. Already, the Committee for the Equality of Women at Harvard has received $500,000 from alumnae that it plans to hold in escrow until the University has tenured an acceptable number of women--specifically, the standpoint set by the University report of 1970. And the senior class has established the Alternative Senior Gift Fund with the same criterion for its release.

But these symbolically significant strides are a far cry from the kind of institutional change that Harvard would have to make in order to create a more equitable environment. While having a president, provost, dean of the Faculty, dean of the students and dean of the College that are male does not necessarily mean that Harvard is sexist, it does mean that Harvard is run by men. And it feels like it's run by men. Consequently, women have fewer role models than men do and members of both sexes have less occasion to see women in high positions of power. These are important elements if future alumni and alumnae are to feel they live in an equitable society--or at least to realize that ours is not one.

America fares worse than Harvard--this is true. There are nine female senators in the United States and there has never been a viable female candidate for president sponsored by either of the two major political parties. But Harvard does not emulate others; it leads so that others can emulate Harvard. Women make up more than 50 percent of the population, so there is little reason that unlike most other Ivy League schools, Harvard has never had an entering class with more women than men. And if that is a result of fewer qualified candidates, such poor numbers should be taken for a temperature of the College, not seen as an exogenous problem.

The administration realizes that it must improve the status of women at Harvard, or at least it realizes that many students, Faculty and alumni/ae think it should. Rudenstine has been pledging change in national as well as local forums for as long as we've been here and this year began a national campaign defending diversity in higher education. But talk is cheap and interest-free. It seems that there is no better occasion than the 25th anniversary of Harvard and Radcliffe's coming together to urge the products of Harvard and Radcliffe to fight together, not just for a fair Harvard, but for a better one.