Pill’s Approval Portends Cultural Shift

One Saturday night during his undergraduate years, Alan D. Croll ’61 remembers setting an alarm for 10:30 p.m. to ensure that his female visitor from Radcliffe College was out of his dorm room by 11 p.m.

“You did not want to be late,” Croll says. “There was absolutely no tolerance, and you would be on probation right away, first offense.”

When the Class of 1961 attended Harvard and Radcliffe, the University strictly enforced ‘parietal rules’ that discouraged private interaction between the Harvard men and the Radcliffe women.

In 1960, the birth control pill—an innovation that would revolutionize attitudes and approaches toward sex—was approved for contraceptive use.

Though the pill did not have a direct impact on Harvard life at first, the approval of the pill represents the beginning of Harvard’s gradual shift from the gender-segregated social scene of the 1950s and early ’60s to the more integrated, liberal environment of today.

THE BIRTH OF THE PILL

The Food and Drug Administration approved the use of Enovid—the first brand of birth control pill—for the treatment of severe menstrual disorders in 1957, but it was not approved as an oral contraceptive until May 1960.

The pill, containing hormones that keep a woman’s ovaries from releasing eggs and thus preventing pregnancy, quickly grew in popularity. By 1967, more than 12.5 million women worldwide were on the pill, and by 1984, an estimated 50 to 80 million women worldwide took it regularly.

While the pill symbolized women’s ability to exercise autonomy over their bodies and have sex without reproductive consequences, it also became harder for women to refuse sex on the basis of the risk of pregnancy, according to History Professor Nancy F. Cott.

“It may have compelled women to engage in sexual activities so that they are not seen as prudes,” she says of the pill.

Men who were at the University at that time echoed Cott’s sentiment.

Joe, a ’61 graduate who asked that his real name not be used, says he believes the pill encouraged women to have more sex because it reduced some of the risk.

“Which was fine with me,” he says, “because I was very interested in having as much sex as I could.”

THE PILL ON CAMPUS

Despite the contraceptive’s national popularity, its role on Harvard’s campus was limited in those early days.

Ann M. Moore ’61 says she and her classmates did not talk about the pill.

“We didn’t discuss it beyond a very limited circle of really close friends,” she says, adding that she personally did not know of anyone who took the pill.

In fact, contraception only became legal in Massachusetts for all women in 1972, when the Supreme Court struck down the state law prohibiting the sale of contraceptives to unmarried women.

“The society held an idea that a nice girl would not get pregnant before marriage,” Moore says. “It was very shameful to get pregnant without getting married.”

Joe agrees that the pill did not affect his sexual life at Harvard.

“During my time at Harvard, I didn’t have any intercourse with a girl who was on the pill,” he says.

GENDER DISCREPANCY

In 1961, women were very much outnumbered on campus. The male to female ratio in the academic year 1960-1961 was 4 to 1, with 4,596 male undergraduates at Harvard and 1,154 females at Radcliffe College.

In every class, women were by far in the minority. The women lived only in the Radcliffe Quad, could not eat in Harvard Yard unless invited by a male student, and could not go into Lamont Library, according to Pamela J. Matz ’70-71, a research librarian at Widener Library.

Furthermore, the Radcliffe women practiced “gracious living,” which meant they could not wear shorts or jeans downstairs in the dormitory or out in the Quad after 5 p.m.. They were required to wear dresses or skirts to class except on the coldest days, when they were permitted to wear slacks, Moore says.

Moore, who attended a large, co-ed public high school in the Chicago suburbs, says she was not as happy socially in college as she was in high school.

“It did not have the same excitement or opportunities that co-ed public high schools or universities would have,” Moore says.

Harvard and Radcliffe were “quite independent” from each other socially, Croll says, adding that a lot of Harvard men preferred to date women from Wellesley or Simmons Colleges.

“There were not a lot of Harvard boys chasing Radcliffe girls,” he says, speculating that some of his peers may have been intimidated by the Radcliffe women.

Patricia D. Lemon ’61 says only a few of her friends at Radcliffe dated Harvard men, and their relationships tended to be largely sexual.

TALKING ABOUT SEX

Nonetheless, sex was a topic widely discussed among the male students at Harvard, students in the Class of ’61 say.

Though Croll says fewer people were sexually active because of parietal rules and other restrictions, he says that “Harvard boys talked about girls and sex a lot.”

On the other hand, conversation about sex was taboo at Radcliffe.

Moore says she focused more on her academics and rarely talked about sex-related issues with her peers, and Lemon adds that students were not able to bring up sex-related questions even with their House Mothers or House Masters.

“It was very hush-hush,” Lemon says.

Lemon adds that adults “very strongly discouraged male and female sexual activity,” and that the health center was the only available resource for women. She says it was also difficult for women to simply go to a physician and get advice about sex.

“They thought they were protecting us from the knowledge, but in fact, this lack of knowledge betrayed us,” Lemon says. “It put us in a position where we couldn’t take care of ourselves.”

Matz says that women still faced difficulties in attaining prescriptions for the pill from the University’s physicians even a decade after the pill’s approval. At that time, Matz and her fellow female students would share information about how best to obtain the pill.

“We discussed what kind of questions the doctors will ask you and whether or not you would have to wear a wedding ring,” she says.

LASTING IMPACT

In the opinion of some Radcliffe students, the pill changed their peer’s lives mostly after, rather than during, college, since at first many were remained cautious and hesitant about its use.

“A lot of women were waiting to see how the pill would turn out,” Moore says.

Croll also says that the pill had a much more gradual, cumulative effect on the changing culture of sex at Harvard and in the country more broadly.

“There was a bit of elation, invitation, and a step away from more Puritan values,” he says. “But women weren’t saying, ‘Let’s go to bed right away.’”

Although the lives of Radcliffe women might not have been strongly affected by the pill during college, the birth control pill did eventually have an impact on their lives.

After meeting her husband, Moore says her physician had prescribed her with a diaphragm as a birth control mechanism.

But because the diaphragm was ineffective, she became pregnant with her first child, Eric, within six months of her marriage.

“He came along because I didn’t go on the pill,” she says.

After the birth of her son in 1965, Moore switched to the pill as her birth control mechanism of choice.

MOVE TO EQUALITY

In the 1960s, the movement towards gender equality gained momentum, spurred by the independence offered to women with the advent of the pill.

“I think [the pill] was an important step in women’s movement in making them independent and equal,” Croll says.

The pill spurred the female push for equality by heightening gender differences, Matz adds.

It was this same movement that would ultimately have significant consequences for the structure of Harvard as a University.

In 1977, Harvard and Radcliffe became one entity after the two schools signed an agreement that placed undergraduate women entirely in Harvard College.

Around the same time, the FDA reported that 10.7 million American women were on the pill.

Today, the prevalence of the pill is still widespread, including on Harvard’s campus.

David S. Rosenthal ’59, the director of University Health Services, says that many students come to campus already taking birth control pills and that UHS will facilitate these prescriptions being refilled. For students who wish to begin taking contraception in college, Rosenthal says they are able make an appointment with a clinician to discuss options.

The pill’s wide use can be attributed largely to its effectiveness. Fewer than 1 out of 100 women get pregnant each year if they always take the pill each day as directed, while about 9 out of 100 women get pregnant each year if they do not always take the pill each day as directed.

Despite the enormous changes of the last 50 years since the pill’s approval, Abby P. Sun ’13—former president of the female advocacy group Radcliffe Union of Students—says the fight for gender equality is ongoing.

“Something that we still have to contend with is that birth control and parenthood is thought to be the responsibility of women,” Sun says. “It should be among all parties involved.”

—Staff writer Jane Seo can be reached at janeseo@college.harvard.edu.