Harvard this week submitted for Federal approval what it hopes will be its final affirmative action plan, complete with goals and timetables for hiring women and minority group members for the next two years.

The new plan--which took over one year to complete at a cost to the University of nearly $250,000--sets forth a policy which for the first time allows women to take maternity leaves with pay.

Walter J. Leonard, assistant to the President and the University's affirmative action coordinator, said yesterday that after conferring with government officials earlier this week he has "every reason to believe that the policy is acceptable and will be accepted."

The Department of Health, Education and Welfare must approve Harvard's plan before the program becomes binding policy for the University. HEW officials said yesterday that the department will probably not act on Harvard's plan before the 45-day time limit since it also just received plans from MIT and Yale.

The present plan includes portions of programs submitted to HEW in February 1970 and November 1971, both of which were invalidated by new orders from Washington.

Bigger Than a Dictionary

John Bynoe, head of the regional HEW office, said the only thing he had noticed about Harvard's plan so far was that it is "bigger than Webster's Dictionary."

The government requires all major Federal contractors to draft an extensive plan for ending discriminatory hiring practices. Federally funded universities and businesses failing to supply the government with required data risk loss of government contracts.

Last year, Federal contracts accounted for about one-third of Harvard's income.

The required data includes figures on women and minority group members in all faculties and job categories, and in the available labor pool in order to locate areas of apparent "under-representation." Institutions must also formulate procedures to safeguard against further discrimination.

Harvard's report pinpoints untenured and tenured faculty positions as particular "areas for improvement."

"While there has been an increase over the past three years in the number of minority and women professors at Harvard, the numbers still remain small," Leonard's analysis of hiring patterns in the University revealed.

In order to alter the present situation in which "some of the faculties [still] do not have any women or minority professors," the various faculties "have been expanding their candidate searches and have instituted measures to ensure that all sources of potential minority and women professors are sought out," the report states.

The hiring targets submitted this week state how many women and minority group members Harvard estimates it will hire in the next two years.

Fourteen women and 32 minority group members currently hold the rank of full professor, out of a total of 743 tenured faculty members in the University. By June 1974, the University expects the number of full professors to rise to 757, and to include one more woman and two more minority group members. The goal for June 1975 is 18 women and 36 minority group members.