Business is no longer exclusively a male domain, and neither is Harvard Business School. Of the 785 first-year MBA candidates at the Business School this year, 175 are women. That's 22 per cent--more than any year in Business School history. "It's the first time that women have critical mass at the school," says Elaine B. Medverd, director of the MBA program. "And it makes a big difference in the classroom."

The jump in the number of women came quickly. The first-year class two years ago was 10 per cent women--ten years ago it was only 5 per cent. The increase came as a result of a rise in the number of women applicants, says Regina E. Herzlinger, associate professor of Business Administration and a member of the Admissions and Financial Aid Policy Committee. Sex-blind admissions at the school have kept the fraction of women in the class approximately the same as that in the applicant pool.

The increase has generated optimism among women at the school about their future role in the business community. Herzlinger believes women in business can attain the goals they set for themselves. Women's lower average salaries, she says, are better explained by their choice of lower-paying fields, such as public-sector jobs, than by discrimination by financial institutions.

Herzlinger adds she has seen women at the Business School grow more confident as their numbers grew. The same pattern appears in the real business world: as the number of women in executive positions continues to rise, "they and their male colleagues stop viewing an influential woman as Woman. Her distinguishing characteristic is no longer the biological characteristic," she says.

Many women at the school look forward to the establishment of a "new girl network" that would serve as "an executive washroom--for women," as Victoria Hamilton '75, a second-year student, describes it. Such a network would ease young women's entrance into an atmosphere wholly different from others in which they have succeeded previously.

A management job may be the first time a woman must work as part of a team in order to thrive, several women business students point out. Few women start their business careers with the teamwork experience that men have received from team sports and other activities.

"It's possible for isolated women to make it on their own," says Linda B. Poor, a second-year student and president of the HBS Women's Student Association (WSA). "But it's a real breakthrough when each of the women in a group can say, 'I need these women and they need me. And I'm confident enough of my own professional ability to take the time to help them."'

Poor says she thinks a network will develop as more women graduates of business schools come to accept a responsibility on their part to provide guidance to other women in their early years with large firms. An encouraging sign, she adds, was the result of a survey the WSA conducted by mail this fall among 1200 HBS alumnae. All of the 300 women who responded said they are interested in helping HBS women to launch their careers.

The WSA hopes to harness this type of willingness to help younger women at the start of their business careers. "Our primary function," Poor explains, "is to see that the women who come here like it and are successful, both while they're here and after they graduate."

Before exams in large first-year courses the WSA runs review sessions which are attended regularly by more than 500 students, both men and women. The sessions are conducted by second-year women students who have received high grades in the course. "It's good for the men who attend to see a woman who's proven her ability to get up and speak in front of such a large group," Poor says.

The WSA also sponsors a series of speeches by women who are "stars in their fields," Poor says. These speakers serve a function the overwhelmingly male HBS faculty cannot serve--that of providing role models for women and suggesting the possibility to male students of "being subordinate to a woman," she adds.

Despite their affirmation of the need for a business-women's network, many HBS women hesitate to call themselves feminists. Some have found identification with the women's movement a drawback in their work experience, especially when they are the first women to hold their positions.

Cathy A. Connett, a second-year MBA candidate, describes her experience as supervisor of a Duncan Hines packing plant. "I had taken great pains to convince the men I was working with that I could do a competent job--I'd specifically requested that the workers train me so that they could get to know me personally and I could earn their respect...One of the women who followed me made a point of correcting the men when they called her a girl instead of a woman. Then when they referred to me as a girl I knew they were using it derogatorily...Why did she have to alienate them that way? It didn't help her image any; it didn't help mine either."

Hamilton also says she has had "very little use for feminist rhetoric. When you have to deal with a man who you think is a sexist, let him do the talking. When he exposes his own illogic, he'll be persuade that you're right. Rhetoric won't persuade anyone."

Hamilton says a woman who seldom makes sexism an issue has more effect when she does make an objection. "I got called the 'prettiest little girl in our class' by a classmate at a job-hunting party. I pointed out to him later that that wasn't a compliment--and he won't do it again. If he had been used to my objecting to his vocabulary, he wouldn't have taken me seriously."