In the six months since a Harvard women's advocacy committee first filed a formal grievance against the two gynecologists who practice for University Health Services (UHS), the doctors, the complainants and their many intermediaries have agreed on only one point: Much more is at issue that the initial charge that a doctor performed too many Caesarian sections during a five month period in 1981-2.

Foremost among the questions raised by the Harvard Medical Area's Joint Committee on the Status of Women is whether the complaints UHS periodically receives from patients, especially those about gynecological care, indicate bad practice or simply the "attitudinal" conflicts UHS says are unavoidable when many women must use the same two practitioners.

"The personalities of the doctors has been a problem from year one," says Althea Aschmann, a Harvard employee and one of several numbers of a voluntary oversight council for non-students on the University group health plan. Gynecologic and obstetric medicine has been "a hot issue" for three years, says Aschmann. She recalls a period in 1979 when three pregnant women joined the staff oversight council because they felt they had not received adequate medical advice through normal UHS channels and wanted changed made.

Other council members echoAschmann observations of built-in problems associated with a clinic such as UHS, where all gynecology beyond routine office care is handled by the same two doctors Jerome M. Federschenider and Paul L Winig '62 For example, many familiar with the pair's work describe them as "traditional" in approach, a term used by some to suggest only a reliance on mechanical rather than "natural" childbirth methods and interpreted by others to imply a brusque office manner.

The Joint Committee complaint on Caesarian section charged that Winig had delivered an unnecessarily high percentage of babies using the operation over a five-month period at Harvard-affiliated Brigham and Women's Hospital, Doctors nation wide "have for several years debated the safety and advisability of relying heavily on the Caesarian technique, which involves surgery, and conventional birthing methods.

"I'm convinced that it's not a question of the quality of technical care people are receiving" says Amy Justice '81 a paid, full-time patient advocate for UHS. "There are times when attitude can get in the way of care." "Justice adds, without being specific, but she also says. "You can't fire people for being a little brisk."

But other people have more serious complaints. The Joint Committee wrote in its original guidance in April that part of its intention was to address allegations of "a consistent pattern of inappropriate and rude conduct [physical as well as verbal] on the part of Dr. Winig. "The two-page letter also refers to an undocumented but strong impression" that Winig tended "to pressure patients into surgery before an adequately definitive diagnosis has been made."

Members of the Joint Committee, which includes about 50 women employed in various capacities at the Medical Area, say they have heard many more complaints and some apparently have first had experience with the doctors in question.

The week after the initial grievance on caesarian sections became public in September, committee members say, another women liked a grievance with UHS against Winig, allying maltreatment five years ago when the woman was a Harvard graduate student.

Deputy UHS Director Dr. Sholem Postel calls the second complaint "an overall allegation of poor treatment" and predicted that an in house investigation would take at least several weeks.

Winig says that the second complaint "has not come to [him] yet" Of the Joint Committee's April grievance in made that a review by Brigham and Women's Hospital officials found nothing wrong with his decision on delivery technique and that he is currently re-reviewing" his disputed operations with senior Brigham and Women's doctors.

But the UHS gynecologist adds that he has a sense there are very few complaints" about him from patients "I feel good about that," he says "because the people I treat are the smartest in the city and certainly the most vocal. If there were something wrong they would complain."

Besides the two most recent grievances against him, Winig say, he can recall one other, based on a "personality conflict," during his 10 years of UHS practice.

After his experience in a clinic, where women cannot choose the doctors they want he says, "I no longer delude myself that I can be every woman's physician."

Federschenider has been unavailable for comment this week.