With 2,000 members on its mailing list and active recruitment of new members at reunion events, CEWH members say they hope the group will continue long after the founding members are no longer involved.
Schlesinger says the group has no definite timeline and will keep going until it runs out of new topics relating to women at Harvard—which she says will never happen.
In early April, the CEWH women published a book of essays about women in academia titled Unequal Rites, Unequal Outcomes: Women in American Research Universities, a project that came out of their 1998 conference.
At their April book party, the women, all sporting pins with the image of a female and male graduate connected by an equal sign, buzzed about the book and the recent appointment of Elena Kagan as dean of Harvard Law School.
“One of the things we do is prick the conscious of people who hear about us. It’s in the air, it will happen,” Dimmitt says. “They don’t have to pay attention to us, but they have to pay attention to the issue of women.”