Even more damaging than the disrespect is the possibility of harassment, which the report found was widespread in science departments. A recent update, authored by Friend, found that for female graduate students in the sciences, such incidents are still a problem.

Evidence that graduate students in other departments are the subject of disparaging comments or even sexual harassment surfaced last year, when three first-year Classics Department graduate students, all women, left the department, calling the atmosphere "intellectually and ethically intolerable." The incident, members of the department said at the time, raised important questions about how women are treated in a department whose scholarship tends to focus on studies dominated by male figures.

But colleagues are not the only source of differential treatment. Students often visualize the ideal Ivy League professor as the gray-haired white man, a model into which women and minorities do not fit, professors say. And disrespect based on such images may be fought by adding to the ranks of female professors.

"I do think sometimes students view me differently," says Friend, who chairs the Standing Committee on the Status of Women. "Students will comment on the way I look. I will co-teach with male faculty and they don't get the same kind of comments."

Professor of English Marjorie Garber, who teaches the popular Core curriculum introductory Shakespeare class, says students and graduates seem not to expect a woman standing in front of the Sanders Theatre lectern.

"Both alumni and my own students notice that fact [a woman is teaching the traditional introductory Shakespeare course] and I think it's a good thing and an exciting thing," she says.

An increased presence of female professors will not only alleviate such misconceptions, it will supply mentors and possible role models for younger female scholars who might otherwise have avoided graduate school, the women say.

"I think one feels the gratitude of students that there are women here," says Vendler.

An obstacle to changing hiring practices, female professors say, is that the Faculty misses the opportunity to sign on certain qualified women simply because their untraditional research interests lie outside the mainstream.

"I think to begin with, they're losing out on first-rate scholars now," says Friend. "If Harvard wants to continue to be very traditional, it might lose out on new trends in all areas."

Women in the Faculty tend to bring new ideas and approaches to scholarship, professors say. Although all stress the impossibility of generalizing about scholarly interests of either men or women, some feel women tend to bring novel view-points to some disciplines.

Pharr notes that perhaps because they have experienced it, "quite a number are interested in the problem of marginalization itself." Others say women tend to have a more interdisciplinary outlook.

Although feminist critique and the study of gender as a factor in shaping history are not uniquely identified with women scholars, some see a tie between the presence of women and the study of gender.

Like the number of women professors, the amount of scholarship devoted at Harvard to issues of gender is below par, some female scholars say.

"Various social science departments haven't appointed as many scholars as you might expect who are interested in gender studies," says Professor of Sociology Theda Skocpol.