Johnson says some departments are more amenable to new approaches in research than others.

"I think Harvard changes slowly and a lot of the assumptions that are still in place about what is serious scholarship have not changed as fast as they should have," she says.

Some professors say that as a result of that reluctance to bring about change, in both what defines "the best" in scholarship and who is to perform it, Harvard's tenure process is not always a fair one for female candidates.

Tenure is at the basis of any change in composition of the Faculty, either in gender or area of study, professors say. When Harvard begins searches determined to find the "best qualified candidate" in any given field, it sometimes neglects interdisciplinary scholars.

"Women often define new fields, so they don't fit in existing fields in any standard way," says Johnson. Others echo her concern that narrowly defined search criteria can exclude women whose areas of expertise straddle several disciplines or embody new viewpoints.

Pharr says that narrowly defined searches can limit the likelihood that a woman will be hired. "When the standard is stated in that way, it's generally a male candidate that springs to mind," Pharr says. She is ambivalent about Harvard's procedure to find "the best" professors, and says the challenge is to make sure women candidates get equal consideration.

"Quality should be a matter for debate, and...more than one kind of quality should be recognized," Johnson says.

Vendler says she has seen no statistical evidence of a gender bias in the tenure process, and Garber, who is dean for affirmative action, says being a woman can sometimes even be an advantage.

"In some cases, it's as likely to function as an incentive as a disincentive," she says. "I don't think there is a widespread resistance to the appointment of women."

But Dean of the Faculty Jeremy R. Knowles says that although he strongly supports affirmative action and equal access for women candidates, no reexamination of the tenure process is planned. "I don't believe we could or should change the criteria for tenure," he says. "I don't think we could or should change the quality of our faculty."

Instead, Knowles says, the answer is in "making sure departments search widely enough, define sub-fields widely enough so as not to exclude the possibility of appointments of women and minorities." He praises Garber's work in monitoring such searches.

In the end, while recruitment initiatives, like all affirmative action efforts, must come from individual departments, some assistance can come from the top. Female faculty members say the work of Knowles and President Neil L. Rudenstine might have some positive effect on the dearth of female faculty.

The recently created affirmative action fund for 15 University faculty appointments over the next five years is a step in the right direction, they say. And an even greater cause for optimism, professors and officials agree, are shifts in graduate school admissions that will shape long-term changes in the faculty.

"If you look at the pipeline for women, the number of women in doctoral programs has grown over the last decade at a remarkable pace," says Joseph J. McCarthy, assistant dean for academic planning.

Pharr says that this year the class of graduate students admitted to the Government Department was 50 percent women, up from 33 percent in recent years.

Faculty members say they do not plan to wait passively for pool population shifts to make a difference in the numbers and the status of women in the Faculty.

Friend says her committee will begin investigating the situation of undergraduate women. She says committee members will also meet with department chairs and present their findings, working to change the conditions documented by the committee.

Garber will continue meeting with department chairs, and next year, as she takes a leave of absence, Grosz will take over her duties as dean.

And the 41-woman Faculty Club lunches will continue for a while, according to Grosz, or at least until a "critical mass" of women is reached. "Until the faculty is 30 percent women, the lunches will play an important role," she says.