Women are urgently needed in politics, but they do not enter the political field because they lack the "killer instinct," former Democratic Sen. Maurine Neuberger said last night.

Sen. Neuberger, now a consultant to the Commissioner of the U.S. Food and Drug Administration, spoke at the third annual dinner for sophomore residents of Radcliffe's East House.

She expressed concern that there are two million more women than men in this country, but almost all politicians are men.

"Legislatures debate pilot programs for education of gifted children, sales of good products, and other consumer issues, all of which affect women because they affect the home. However, it's the men who are passing those laws," she said.

"But women represent more accurately that men the nation's hopes for such things as education of children I have fount that women have a more humanitarian approach," she said.

Women do not enter polities however because "society has taught them attitudes which are just the reverse of the killer instinct one needs to compete in the war of a political campaign," she said.