The Business School is "on the whole not a sexist place," Hamilton adds. Most professors, she says, are extremely careful not to make sexist remarks and to give women students an equal opportunity to speak in class. Her one criticism was that the required first-year organizational behavior classes do not adequately cover the problems that arise when businessmen have to work with female colleagues for the first time.

Kate Merritt, a second-year student, echoed this objection. "My human behavior professor was scared to death of the issue...At least one-third of the guys in my section would be impossible for a women to work with. The school is abdicating a responsibility by not making the men realize that they may have to report to a female executive someday."

"It's not just an issue for human behavior classes," she continues. "Not one of the chief executive officers in our case studies has been a woman...The school is not practicing overt sexism, but they're not actively trying to promote women's acceptance either."

Merritt's criticism addresses only one side of the problem a woman faces when she considers a career in management--another concerns the conflicts between rearing a family and having a business career.

Two recent Business School graduates stress the difficulty of doing both things well.

Marilyn G. Breslow, who graduated in 1970, is the administrative manager of a Polaroid research facility and the mother of two small children. Fulfilling the responsibilities of both these jobs is "no mean feat," she says, adding "I have to be in good physical shape for this lifestyle. I can't afford to get sick."

Breslow's burden is eased by her 45-hour-a-week housekeeper, who watches the children while both parents are at work. She and her husband, a professor at the Medical School, came up with this expensive solution to "the dual career problem" by making use of their two professional salaries. She and her husband also share equally in child-rearing tasks.

Diana Barrett, who graduated from the Business School in 1974, says she thinks it is unrealistic to expect most marriages to work out so equitably. An instructor in Management Development in Health Care at the School of Public Health, Barrett is the mother of one child and expects a second. She says she "has structured her family and professional responsibilities so that they dovetail...I still play a much stronger role than my husband when it comes to our child."

Barrett's choice of an academic career has allowed her more flexibility than she would have had in health-care management. She made her choice with that flexibility in mind, but warns business school women of the difficulty in foreseeing the need to make these hard choices when they are still single and in school.

"No one can be super-professional, super-wife, and super-mother all at once. Women who are very good at organizing their time try to do two jobs--and their professional life suffers."

"I've had to make sacrifices in my career," she continues. "I'd love the chance to be a vice president in a major teaching hospital. It's something I don't have the time to do and still fulfill my family responsibilities--and it's the kind of job I won't be offered if I start looking too late."

Women who are concerned with integrating feminist principles into their career plans often reject Business School as "a sell-out." As second-year MBA candidate Anne L. Houden puts it, "Large numbers of women going into management will change business's image. But right now, to get ahead at Harvard Business School you have to adopt business ethics--and those are male ethics."

Houden began college at Wellesley in 1968 and took seven years off before returning as a junior to the University of Wisconsin. She labels herself a feminist, and she, too, sees a conflict between business ethics and feminist principles.

"Whenever I run into the radicals I went to college with in the '60s I'm afraid they're going to accuse me of 'selling out,"' she says. "But the financial world has an important effect on people's lives. I'd like to see more humanistically oriented people go into business and maintain their values...I feel a responsibility to take the skills I've gained at HBS and use them to foment change."

Jo Froman, a second-year student who has been out of college since 1969, takes a similar position. "Men and women have to work together to restructure the business environment," she says. Large numbers of women in responsible positions should give management a more androgynous image, she added.

Froman says she does not consider most of her male colleagues at HBS sexists. Because of this, she says, "ten or 15 years down the line things are going to be much better for women in business. These guys are going to be in a position to hire women as managers--and I think they'll do it."

The few facts available seem to bear Froman out. A recent Fortune survey found all 34 women members of the HBS Class of 1973 working, or looking for work, in such formerly all-male jobs as banking, consulting, sales and marketing, and advertising. Yet whether Herzlinger's prediction, that the next ten years will find a woman in charge of a Fortune 500 firm, will come true remains to be seen.