The practical reasons given in the report for maintaining the present ratio were excruciatingly revealing. An increase in total enrollment to 9000 was convincingly dismissed because of the drain it would cause on money and on Cambridge housing space. But the reasons given against equalizing male and female enrollment at 6000 each had no foundation other than male supremacy. The first was based on the idea that only male companionship is important for both women and men. (Remember the construction of dorms at Harvard and Radcliffe.) A decrease in the number of men, the report argued, would mean that the remaining men, especially those in racial, geographical, and class minorities, would be so small in absolute numbers that they would have no male friends. In fact, the committee threatened, admitting moreactually capable of accepting a woman who has her own 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 M. A. or Ph.D. 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, etc."), 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 houses, 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.

There is a myth that it is possible to hold down a full-time job and have children.

Even if you are willing to work twice as hard as any man, it is untrue unless you can I) hire a more economically oppressed woman to do your shit-work for you, 2 work out some kind of communal arrangement (difficult in most communities where people still adhere religiously to their notions of family privacy) or 3) make your husband or man share equally in tasks like cooking, cleaning and child caring (I defy the wives of most "emancipated" men to tell me this is easy).

The existence of an autonomous women's liberation movement has helped many women, including myself, in one important way. It has given us the moral support to say once and for all that we are not inadequate human beings, selfish mothers, or castrating females for making the justifiable demands on men and on society that we be treated as full human beings, not as sex objects, nurses, or servants.

It has done this through revealing to us that problems we considered to be our own hang ups are shared by other women-to some degree by all women-and that they are part of a particular social structure rather than the inevitable outcome of biological differences.

THIS IS NOT to say that honorable relations with men are impossible, even under the present structure; simply that they are very difficult, and above all, they can never be a substitute for a life of one's own.

Women, like men, should have the option to live alone if they wish, without men, with one man, with many men, or with other women, and still feel like fulfilled people. They should know that having a child is a fine experience, but not the only fine experience a woman can have, nor necessarily the best.

All of these things can only come about for women, along with economic liberation, if we have a social and a political revolution in this country involving a change in the nature of work both for men and for women.

AT RADCLIFFE the exploitation of women is less obvious but just as deep as in other areas of American Society. At the outset, the "ideal" of Harvard elitism, borrowed heavily from the English universities, is basically one of male intellectual clubbiness-thus some common rooms are still closed to female tutors, and there are ridiculously few women on the faculty.

Fortunately, fewer and fewer Harvard men are drawn to this particular notion. Radcliffe women are not obviously passive in this community-indeed, we are often incredibly active, even while "waiting" for the right man to come along.

But we are active in precisely those safe areas which have been already laid out by men and male attitudes. Like blacks, we must behave like the dominant group in order to be accepted by them, and at the same time cater to their assumptions of our inherent weakness and inferiority (this extends to the sub-societies of radical political movements, and the editorial board of the Harvard CRIMSON).

Radcliffe women may no longer join ladies' clubs to fill their time (though some may be active in their local PTA) but our attitude towards men and our own lives may not be significantly different than those of women who do.

Finally, in the mind of one who actually believed it, the happy-matron-career woman notion promoted by Radcliffe is a dreadful illusion, and one which if taken seriously can keep us not only from developing our own possibilities, but from relating to other women. The contempt and distrust women have for each other, even when they are "friends," is the counterpart of the excessive awe we feel towards men, and part of what makes us sense that we would be utterly desolate without a man in our lives.