Federal law, including civil rights statutes, the Civil Rights Act of 1964, Title IX of the Education Amendment of 1972 and the Civil Rights Restoration Act of 1987 all require that Harvard recruit more women, the alumnae report notes.

Harvard's faculty does not reflect the availability of women scholars, according to the alumnae report and Harvard's own affirmative action plan reports. The University underestimates the pool of available women, the alumnae report says, and recruitment efforts and support for women's studies are not sufficient.

The committee sent its conclusions and recommendations to President Neil L. Rudenstine and the University's governing Board of Overseers.

The alumnae call for radical new programs, including substantial additional resources to increase the number of tenured women faculty and mandatory hiring targets for each department with penalties for non-compliance.

Committee members also want departments to consider their own junior faculty for promotion to tenure a practice rare in Harvard's present tenure system.

The alumnae committee, the Radcliffe Alumnae Association and Wilson raised money for a new Bunting Institute fellowship aimed at helping the research work of promising junior faculty members.

The $65,000 raised so far will allow just one junior professor next year to take a leave of absence, without money concerns or a teaching burden. Money has not yet been raised for future years, Wilson says.

Peggy B. Schmertzler '53, who chairs the alumnae committee, says members hope their work will draw a serious response from Rudenstine.

A new Radcliffe student Committee for Women Faculty, founded earlier this month, is also hoping to push female faculty hiring to the administration.

Dramatic steps are necessary to ensure equality for women soon, Schmertzler says.

"Over the past 11 years the increase in the number of tenured women has been .4 percent annually," she says. "At that rate it's going to be 100 years before we have 50 percent tenured women."

"We're asking the president to put his power behind the goal of equality for women and we believe he wants to," she says. "We're hoping we're enabling him to do what he wants to do."

Ineffective

Professors, however, say the Radcliffe committee and students' work will probably have little immediate effect, since alumnae and undergraduates have no voice in tenure decisions.

"There's a million different advocacy groups," says Professor of Economics Claudia Goldin. "They go around with their papers and white placards but that's it. It's not something to be taken very seriously."