Bunting Stresses Role Of Peace Corps Women

Women can make a "tremendous contribution" to the Peace Corps, Radcliffe President Mary I. Bunting, one of the vice-chairmen of the recently-created Citizens' Advisory Committee on the Peace Corps, declared yesterday.

Sargent Shriver, Director of the Corps, "wants to use both men and women effectively," she reported, noting, "there is some indication that young married couples would do a better job than groups of single men and women." The program will send couples if both husband and wife are individually accepted for the Peace Corps.

Calling the Corps "an awfully important move for the country," she cited the "great response" of students to Kennedy's proposal as the motivating force behind the program. In the future, she hopes that the colleges will integrate their separate Peace Corps, with government co-operation.

Although "it is valuable to make the opportunity available now." President Bunting emphasized that the Peace Corps should not move too fast. "This is not the moment for drumming up support," she remarked. "We don't want people who are not really interested."

She agreed with Shriver that "there are many ways of serving the purposes of the Peace Corps without a frontal attack bearing a specific label." Programs sponsored by groups such as industries and labor unions could provide much of the manpower needed to aid foreign countries, she pointed out.

Should Learn Language

"It is important for many people to think how they can best serve the objectives of the Peace Corps whether or not they ever enlist in it," President Bunting commented.

"We need a diversity of knowledge coupled with other kinds of ability," she explained, stressing that bilingual people from all sorts of occupations and professions can make unofficial contributions to Peace Corps activities. "We need not just physicists, but farmers, builders, and home economists to aid other countries," she said.

Such preparation is especially important for women, the President declared She quoted Secretary of State Dean Rusk as saying that the foreign service is most effective when wives understand and participate in their husbands' careers.

Drop Outs for Marriage

Too often, she commented, men feel that marriage and the foreign service are incompatible. "Just as women drop out of college to get married, men drop out of the foreign service to get married," she said.