Speakers Charge Harvard Unfair to Women Students

Admissions policies and the practices of faculty members and male students at Harvard discriminate against women, speakers charged last night before a predominately female audience of about 100 at a forum on the academic status of women.

The speakers also protested the scarcity of female faculty members at Harvard, the lack of day care centers and opportunities to do part-time graduate work, and the discriminatory hiring practices women face when they finish their education.

It is time that "Harvard University, as one of the most prestigious universities in the country, shows some long overdue leadership in the field of equal rights for women," said Roberta Benjamin '62, the forum's moderator.

The speakers called for the admission of more women students to the university. "Then we could at least escape into the invisibility some of the men enjoy," Cynthia Mallenkopf, a law student, said.

The speakers cited the psychological pressures women feel in the predominately male Harvard atmosphere. Ellen Ojaj, teaching fellow in Government, spoke of "the conflict between wanting to be professional and assert your own ideas and the cultural pull we all feel not to want to hurt the ego of men."

Dr. Muriel Sugarman, a graduate of the Medical school and a practicing psychiatrist, said that in this atmosphere female medical students become either masculine or "real shrinking violets."

The lack of female faculty members deprives women students of career models, several of the speakers said. "We don't see women who have coped with both a family and an academic career," Janet Edwards '72 said.

Mrs. Ojaj said that this lack of models also explains why the drop-out rate is higher for women than for men students. "Why shouldn't they drop out-whom have they got to look to for models?" she said.