Many of us would not want the solution to this problem to be for women to become as manipulative as politicians or businessmen must be in the present system. We would like to see a society in which men could serve in the best sense of that word, could see their role as developing a better society for all, and in which women could do as well as serve-that is, plan create, direct.

As for why women traditionally have not been creative, some of the social reasons are obvious, and have been brilliantly analyzed in Virginia Woolf's A Room Of One's Own. According to Woolf, a woman needs, as a bare minimum, financial independence, an income of her own, and a room to work in, things she has never had traditionally.

Some of us now may have a bedroom of our own (although living space at Radcliffe is distinctly less plentiful than at Harvard), but we do not have room-real psychological room in which to function.

How many of us have determined to travel on our own , seeking the kind of free mental space in which to observe, imagine, write, only to find that a woman is never as free as a man to bum across country or through Europe. Ever try to sit down in a park with a book or a sketch pad for more than five minutes without some character feeling it his obligation to make an attempt at picking you up? Of course you can get rid of him but your peace of mind is shattered for that day.

THE POINT is, to-create you need to be able to lose yourself in things and ideas around you, to forget your physical presence for a time. For a woman this is virtually impossible.

As has been pointed out by the women's liberation movement, the plain woman is continually burdened by scorn and abuse, while the even moderately attractive one is the butt of infinite routine seduction attempts. The initial pleasure of this kind of attention soon wears off when you realize that in many cases it has nothing to do with you personally; it is not your fascinating presence that has drawn the men, but rather the simple fact that you are a woman.

Our tendency to romanticize encounters derives in great part from the fact that we are essentially passive in the love relationship waiting is always fraught with fantasy. Even at Radcliffe one must generally wait to be asked to be married.

The passive waiting for a man to enter her life and magically transform it is something that the intellectual woman has been taught to desire as well as to fear. Is it any wonder that we get "hung up," resentful, are constantly being accused by men of expecting more than they are willing to give?

Of course they are right in one way-we are expecting them to fill the vacuum that exists in our lives by what we assume to be the fullness of theirs. And yet how few men are actually capable of accepting a woman who has her won life, who asks that he give her the support and help in her work that he has always demanded of her.

I have met many college educated women who tell me apologetically that they have given up work on their MA or PhD or are not working because "My husband doesn't like me to."

I can already hear some "independent" Cliffie protesting "But why does she take it? It's her fault." I probably would have said the same thing while I was still in college and hadn't yet seen just how difficult it is to do something about it yourself, how difficult it is to make it on your own as a woman in this society facing the psychological and physical pressures of bad affairs, social intimidation ("What's wrong with you, are you promiscuous, don't you like children, are you frigid, didn't anyone want to marry you, ect."), and, even more important, lousy work possibilities.

Try entering medicine, law, or academics and see how women, even Radcliffe women, are treated. Or try simply getting a job after you graduate-any kind of a job that isn't totally mind destroying.

English majors I knew who graduated from Harvard went almost immediately into editorships at publishing house, or reportorial jobs on papers like the N.Y. Times. Their female counterparts became readers in those same publishing houses, or, if they were lucky, got to write for some Women's Page.

AS FOR the woman who happens to get pregnant, in the absence of decent abortion laws, or adequate child care facilities, she is faced with two possibilities: raising the child herself and working at the same time, or turning to dependency on a man.

Of course the problems of a Radcliffe girl confronting these things are far less than those of a working class woman or welfare mother-and yet even for the middle class woman they are traumatic and difficult.