Outgoing Radcliffe President Matina S. Horner received the Radcliffe College Alumnae Association's (RCAA) highest honor Saturday night as the Radcliffe Biennial Alumnae Council concluded its three-day meeting this weekend.

Although the RCAA usually gives only one woman its medal each year, Renee Landers '77, who is president of the association, said an exception was made so that Horner, who will be resigning in July after serving at the school's helm for 17 years, could receive one.

The RCAA presented its first 1988 medal, given to the woman who has done the most for other women, to Jane Pauley in June.

Horner received right after speaking to a group of about 130 alumnae about the improvement in relations between Harvard and Radcliffe during her tenure as president. Her speech was one of the highlights of the three-day series of speeches, panel discussions and workshops that focused this year on women and leadership.

"Above all, what I treasure most at Radcliffe is my time working with and for such a talented and exciting group of women. It really has been a great privilege," Horner said.

Horner described the changing relationship between Harvard and Radcliffe as the difference between a seesaw and a rowboat. In the past, relations were like a seesaw, with one side battling the other for equality, but now, Horner said, it was more like a rowboat, with both parties pulling together.

After resigning her post in July, Horner plans to work on a two-year project beginning with a series of conferences addressing women's issues. Her successor has not yet been chosen, but over 300 men and women have applied.

At an earlier panel discussion, three women health care experts concluded that women must begin to assume leadership roles in the medical profession.

"Isn't it time for women to dominate?" said Mary E. Costanza '58, the director of the Division of Oncology at the U-Mass Medical Center, adding that hospitals are currently run by men and administered in almost a military fashion.

Costanza said that women have gentler leadership attributes than men, and that when women begin to take control of hospitals "men would be viewed as too fiesty, too aggressive, too violent."

But since women are more interested in caring for their patients than in climbing the hospital corporate ladder, Costanza said, there are still few women in leadership positions in hospitals despite the increasing number of female doctors.

Perri Klass '78, a pediatric resident and author of The New York Times Magazine article, "Are Women Better Doctors?" said she was also disillusioned with the male medical world because of its lack of sensitivity to female issues.

"I got pregnant in the second year of medical school," said Klass. "I had learned about every genetic defect, I had learned about reproduction, but I knew nothing about normal pregnancies. I began to feel as if pregnancy was a weakness."