The Battle Begins Here

Harvard has been a man's world for over 300 years. Despite a gradual change during the past few decades, it remains so at heart. The university is responding very slowly and awkwardly to demands for equality for women.

The percentage of women in the college is rising, Radcliffe is gradually merging with Harvard, and rarely do professors admit they would prefer to teach only men. But administrators still claim openly that the college must continue to admit many more men than women because the rich and powerful men will donate generously to Harvard's endowment. Women, they say, will raise children and let their husband do the donating.

Senior year in high school, as a top-of-the-class, achievement-oriented woman, I knew that eventually I would have to fight my way into a man's world. But women's lib was the "in" cause that year, and more and more channels seemed to be opening for women. Being female, I thought, might even be an advantage by the time I graduated from Radcliffe. It never occurred to me that the battle would begin at Harvard.

Harvard Yard was co-ed for the first time in 1972-3, with 200 Radcliffe freshmen scattered among almost 1000 men. Twelve hundred freshmen crammed into one section of the campus inevitably produced a hothouse environment. But one woman for every five men heightened the intensity. Two or three of the five of them seemed to be actively courting each of us. Almost every woman on my floor had at least one Harvard guy fall madly and foolishly in love with her during the first month of school. Which was flattering, of course, but also frightening for many of us.

First weeks at college are difficult enough without some man you've barely met writing love poems to you and dogging your every step. It is probably pretty standard freshman fare at most co-ed colleges. But the five to one ratio made it that much more likely to happen to each of us.

And the romantic infatuations by no means implied an acceptance of Radcliffe women as friends, equals or peers. Many men seemed unwilling to accept the challenge of intellectual women. For each man who considered Radcliffe women highly desirable, there was one who was generally disgusted by "Cliffies." The Radcliffe bitch stereotype--witty, bright, castrating--is very real to many men. They say openly that they just don't like Radcliffe women. Freshman year there were groups of men in the dorm who stuck together, uninterested in Radcliffe women as friends, and looking elsewhere for their girlfriends.

In January of my freshman year, The New York Times Sunday Magazine published an article by Matina Horner, president of Radcliffe. It contained the results of her "fear of success" studies, claiming that many women are afraid to be successful, afraid to compete with men. Her subjects, male and female college students, described successful women as neurotic, over-aggressive, and generally unhappy. Achievement in a man's world seemed to conflict with society's demand that women be "feminine," good mothers and wives, and never threaten men.

The study set off an uproar in my co-ed dorm. It seemed to hit home on many points. Some of us challenged the men: would you feel worse if a woman beat you on a test than if a man did? To our horror, everyone of the men in the room said yes. The study touched a sore point with many of the women. How were we to resolve this conflict in our lives, how were we to be wife and mother, respected as women, and not betray our intellectual and achievement-oriented selves? Harvard gave us no clue on this point, no hint as to how other women had solved the dilemma, for we never saw successful women, never saw women at all. There was no guidance, no role-models.

I had to defend myself freshman year against the charge that this fear of success had irretreviably confused my psyche. Even one of my closest male friends concluded that "Cliffies" were generally fucked up. Not because we were aggressive or too smart, but because the social scene we had been raised in was prejudiced against intellectual women and bound to warp our psyches. Although he admitted that his girlfriend and I were exceptions, most "Cliffies" were a bit too strange for him. And many men were less willing to grant exceptions.

By the beginning of second semester, some of the women on my floor had reacted violently to the pressure of these attacks. They struck back with an attack on the masculinity of the men around them. These men didn't measure up to the brilliant Harvard Man they had expected to find at college. The men might be smart, but they were also weak and insecure, incapable of dealing with equally bright women.

While I sympathized with the spirit of their attack, I disliked this bitter generalization as much as I disliked the stereotype of the "Cliffie" bitch. Many men were insecure and unaccepting. But among the thousands of men at Harvard, I did find a group of close friends. Freshman year was this process of refinement, narrowing the overwhelming sphere of my acquaintances into a supportive set of friends.

Most of all freshman year, I resented the fact that my sex was inescapably an issue, resented the constant necessity of defending myself and all of womanhood against chauvinist attacks. I resented the strain the unbalanced sex ratio placed upon my social relations, my academics and my general psyche. I resented the awkward merger-non-merger of Harvard and Radcliffe which left all of us hanging, unsure of where we went to school. Radcliffe seemed to be a convenient fiction, designed by Harvard to protect the university from feminine pollution. All Harvard University-- the administration, faculty, alumni and many students--seemed to prefer to remain a man's world. The academic community was no escape from the pressures of the real world. The battle began here.