Women Form Employee Group In Atmosphere of Tense Distrust

THE AFFIRMATIVE action proposal submitted to the Department of Health, Education and Welfare in early March does not represent Harvard's first attempt to meet Federal government requirements for a comprehensive non-discriminatory hiring plan.

Rather, it is the latest in a series of efforts to insure--to the government's satisfaction--the equal employment of women and minority group members on all the rungs of the ladder, in all the faculties and departments of the University.

But all of Harvard's proposals have failed. And despite the fact that Federally-funded institutions whose affirmative action proposals do not comply with government standards risk loss of Federal grants (about one-third of Harvard's total annual income), all indications are that the University's new and purportedly improved proposal is no more likely to win HEW approval than its forerunners.

Harvard's failure to complete an acceptable plan has created some tension between women currently employed by Harvard and the Administration. And despite the Administration's oft-voiced commitment to non-discriminatory hiring, and its assurances of the existence of comprehensive plans to implement the requisite recruitment, impatience, especially among women in the faculty ranks, has gradually turned to distrust.

This Spring, Harvard women employees finally united to work toward the goals which women had tried but failed to realize individually or in small groups. That organization, Women Employed at Harvard, will not limit its activities to lobbying for the recruitment of women. However, its formation clearly resulted from dissatisfaction with the University's nebulous stance on affirmative action.

Back in October, a small group of women faculty met with President Bok to protest what they termed the slow pace with which the University was proceeding in drawing up a new affirmative action proposal. But the women were not satisfied with the outcome of that meeting, so the following month they met with Radcliffe President Horner.

They also conferred with Walter J. Leonard, special assistant to President Bok and coordinator of the University's affirmative action program. Leonard assured them that he was maintaining constant touch with women in the University community to ascertain their ideas regarding affirmative action.

But the women faculty were disillusioned with the responses they received from the three administrators. So they garnered 33 signatures from women faculty members and administrators in a letter urging President Bok to give higher priority to the University's affirmative action program.

"It is urgent," the women wrote, "that the University clarify its position, good will, and its intent to undertake action to change the traditional pattern in which few women have been placed in tenured or advanced faculty rank."

"Women throughout the University feel they have not had the monetary and status rewards commensurate with those of their male colleagues, and have not been given sufficient opportunity for advancement," the letter said.

The women said that they did not advocate the appointment of women to positions for which they are not qualified, and they acknowledged the "difficulty of reversing old attitudes and changing traditional procedures, especially when the latter are informal and simply understood."

That letter was never answered to the satisfaction of the women. Realizing that in numbers there is strength, those women Corporation appointees embarked on a campaign to garner support from women employed at every level in the University. They extended their cause to salary-and-wage employees: office workers, kitchen workers and laboratory technicians.

After several organizational meetings, 100 women Corporation appointees and salary-and-wage employees gathered in Lowell Lecture Hall to endorse unanimously the founding of an organization of women employees.

In turn, that organization voted unanimously to recruit and hire a paid executive officer to coordinate the organization's activities and implement its objectives.

THE FORMATION of this organization sets a precedent at the University, whose history has not included the coordination of activities by Corporation appointees and salary-and-wage employees. No doubt the goals of each of these groups of working women overlap more than tangentially.

Previous organizational efforts of both groups had been hampered by an extraordinarily high turnover rate in their ranks. Corporation appointees are constantly moving on to other institutions following unsuccessful tenure bids, and salary-and-wage employees inevitably seek positions with local corporations whose starting salaries and promotion scales are considerably more attractive than those offered by Harvard.

So the organization resolved to "make its purpose general enough to include everyone and exclude no one." And, the diversity of the women who have chosen to affiliate themselves with the organization may prove to be its ultimate strength.

Many of the women who have attended its night-time meetings are in their 50s and 60s. As Margaret A. Mills, president of the Graduate Women's Organization, has noted, the meetings have not been of the "general rag-tag graduate students pissed off at something" variety.

The founding charter of the organization calls for a flexible structure that would enable it to function as a general association for interested individuals and as a clearinghouse for already constituted groups.

Its general objectives include:

* seeking equity with male counterparts in compensation and job classification;

* working actively for the promotion of women employees and the appointment of women to jobs now held only by men;

* seeking improved day-care facilities;

* increasing Harvard's responsiveness to the capacities and needs of long-time women employees;

* creating a staff resources and communications center to serve all women employed by Harvard, and all smaller organizations of women employed by the University; and,

* publicizing all laws concerning the employment of women.

The last of these objectives alludes to the insistence by the women that they have some sort of input into the creation of future affirmative action proposals.

And although the University is not required to divulge the contents of its affirmative action plan until after it has been accepted by HEW and has become binding University policy, the women have long maintained that the Administration might profit from suggestions by women employees.

The women have established a sliding scale of dues that is intended to reflect each individual member's commitment to the organization. Their resolution suggests that a women who could not afford to volunteer time might "accordingly make larger cash contributions."

The organization will undoubtedly stress its visibility: "Harvard is very impressed by persistence," one member of the association noted. And although some women have suggested that their goals can only be realized if the organization moves as a union with strike power, it is unlikely that the organization will proceed in this manner.

The issue of the organization's status in the University remains unresolved. However, if the group obtains the free office space for which it is hoping, and can effectively raise the funds that will enable the hiring of an executive coordinator who is familiar with the University's idiosyncracies, it is very likely that we will be hearing from Women Employed at Harvard when school resumes in the Fall, and perhaps even sooner.