When the women at Harvard University decided they needed more support on campus, they turned to a proven model for success -- the Penn Women's Center.
"Right now Harvard has no central locus for women's activity," said Elena DiLapi, director of the Penn Women's Center. "They want to make sure that women's needs are taken care of and they know that Penn has been able to do that very well."
DiLapi has received several calls from groups at Harvard looking for advice on beginning a women's center.
A report released earlier this year at Harvard by the student-run Women's Initiative Network outlined the goals of women's groups on Harvard's campus. The group also established three key areas they believe Harvard should improve upon: increasing the number of tenured female faculty, ensuring harsher penalties for sexual assault and establishing a women's center on campus.
Co-chairwomen Victoria Steinberg and Shauna Shames, who graduated last spring, have said that the report is aimed to reach out to Harvard students, but most importantly to give a signal to administrators that there is work to be done.
Currently, Harvard is the only Ivy League school without an established women's center on campus. Columbia University's women's center was created in 1983 when Columbia College became co-educational. Brown University's Sarah Doyle Women's Center recently celebrated 25 years at the university.
In 1999, after over a century of providing women's education at Harvard, Radcliffe College announced it would fold into the larger institution.
With the loss of Radcliffe, Harvard women lost a lot more than a separate school name -- they lost their campus support.
Two years later, Harvard women are still struggling with this loss, finding it hard to coordinate the more than a dozen women's groups currently active on the campus.
DiLapi said she was unphased by the phone calls she has received from Harvard. The Penn Women's Center is one of the most established in the country. Next month, the University of Virginia Press will publish a handbook for campus-based women's centers with a chapter written by both DiLapi and her colleague Sharon Daniel.
"We are one of the better centers in the country," DiLapi said. "We are consulted annually by about 20 different schools."
Though Penn may be ahead of the pack when it comes to women's issues, DiLapi insists that there is always room to move forward.
"The nature of the issue makes it so that there is a continuing need," she said. "It is better here because we see a lot more women in leadership positions, but there is always room for improvement."
