While some women administrators say they feel their working environments are integrated, others say they often find themselves alone in a room full of men, aware that their individual successes are not always repeated.

"I'm usually the only woman in a room," during meetings, Graham says. "You feel that people are going to remember you because you don't look like anyone else," she adds.

O'Neill recalls that at her first board meeting of the Cambridge Chamber of Commerce the men in the room stood up when she entered, unaccustomed to having a woman join them. "I think they were more uncomfortable than I was," O'Neill says.

Within the University community, however, O'Neill and other administrators say they note progress. Candace R. Corvey, associate dean of the Faculty of Arts and Sciences for finance, says it is unusual to find herself the only woman at a meeting. Zeckhauser says when she arrived at Harvard, she rarely found herself working with women, but that has changed.

"By the 1970s it was not as extraordinary as it would have been earlier" to be a woman in a meeting, Shore says. "Obviously we were never 50 percent, but rarely did I go someplace where there weren't any women in the room."

Although many female administrators describe positive personal experiences, they acknowledge that some of their colleagues have not been so lucky.

"I feel I couldn't have been better treated by Harvard in terms of career opportunities," says Corvey, who devises the budget for Harvard's largest faculty. "Having said that, I think it's very important to suggest that my experience can't be generalized."

Some female administrators fault Harvard for the consistently low numbers of women at the top.

The dearth of women administrators at Harvard "probably can't be explained by demographics alone," Corvey says.

Graham says women haven't reached high positions of authority at Harvard because they "haven't been asked." She adds, "I think Harvard missed a lot of good opportunities on the way" to her appointment.

Harvard's large size and decentralized system of management partially explain why so few women have reached the top tiers, administrators say.

Harvard is "changing slowly because it's a big institution. When you have a large institution like this, the incentive for change is minimized. Sometimes it's slow to change," O'Neill says.

"I really think what we're seeing is a continuous process, the endpoint of which is fairly predictable," says Dean of the Faculty A. Michael Spence. "Over a period of time I would expect the number of women to increase steadily--it will take longer in some areas than others."

Most women interviewed say they think conditions for women vary throughout different parts of the University. In particular, hiring policy is a decentralized task, conducted differently throughout Harvard's divisions.

"I think there are imbalances. I see pockets of a lot of women and pockets of men in the administration," says Elizabeth C. Huidekoper, director of the office of budgets and director of sponsored research. "I think the balance has to be maintained. In certain areas, you have to have some sort of affirmative action to attain a balance."