A BB Reading Question

[mishum2000]

It is frequently assumed that the mechanization of work has a revolutionary effect on the lives of the people who operate the new machines and on the society into which the machines have been introduced. For example, it has been suggested that the employment of women in industry took them out of the household, their traditional sphere, and fundamentally altered their position in society. In the nineteenth century, when women began to enter factories, Jules Simon, a French politician, warned that by doing so, women would give up their feminity. Friedrich Engels, however, predicted that women would be liberated from the "social, legal, and economic subordination" of the family by technological developments that made possible the recruitment of "the whole female sex into public industry". Observers thus differed concerning the social desirability of mechanization's effects, but they agreed that it would transform women's lives.

Historians, particularly those investigating the history of women, now seriously question this assumption of transforming power. They conclude that such dramatic technological innovations as the spinning jenny, the sewing machine, the typewritter, and the vacuum cleaner have not resulted in equally dramatic social changes in women's economic position or in the prevailing evaluation of women's work. The employment of young women in the textile mills during the Industrial Revolution was largely an extension of an older pattern of employment of young, single women as domestics. It was not the change in office technology, but rather the separation of secretarial work, previously seen as apprenticeship for beginning managers, from administrative work that in the 1880's created a new class of "dead-end" jobs, thenceforth considered "women's work". The increase in the numbers of married women employed outside the home in the twentieth century had less to do with the mechanization of housework and an increase in leisure time for these women than it did with their own economic necessity and with high marriage rates that shrank the available pool of single women workers, previously, in many cases, the only women employers would hire.

Women's work has changed considerably in the past 200 years, moving from the household to the office or the factory, and later becoming mostly white-collar instead of blue-collar work. Fundamentally, however, the conditions under which women work have changed little since before the Industrial Revolution: the segregation of occupations by gender, lower pay for women as a group, jobs that require relatively low levels of skill and offer women little opportunity for advancement all persist, while women's household labor remains demanding. Recent historical investigation has led to a major revision of the notion that technology is always inherently revolutionary in its effects on society. Mechanization may even have showed any change in the traditional position of women both in the labor market and in the home.

Q: It can be inferred from the passage that the author would consider which of the following to be an indication of a fundamental alteration in the conditions of women's work ?

A) Statistics showing that the majority of women now occupy white-collar positions

B) Interviews with married men indicating that they are now doing some household tasks

C) Surveys of the labor market documenting the recent creation of a new class of jobs in electronics in which women workers outnumber men four to one

D) Census results showing that working women's wages and salaries are, on the average, as high as those of working men

E) Enrollment figures from universities demonstrating that increasing numbers of young women are choosing to continue their education beyond the undergraduate level.

[purifier]

I made a mistake by choosing A but someone told me that the answer is E... Can you please explain it Michael?

[madabtGRE]

Women's work has changed considerably in the past 200 years, moving from the household to the office or the factory, and later becoming mostly white-collar instead of blue-collar work. Fundamentally, however, the conditions under which women work have changed little since before the Industrial Revolution: the segregation of occupations by gender, lower pay for women as a group, jobs that require relatively low levels of skill and offer women little opportunity for advancement all persist, while women's household labor remains demanding. Recent historical investigation has led to a major revision of the notion that technology is always inherently revolutionary in its effects on society. Mechanization may even have showed any change in the traditional position of women both in the labor market and in the home.

Q: It can be inferred from the passage that the author would consider which of the following to be an indication of a fundamental alteration in the conditions of women's work ?

A) Statistics showing that the majority of women now occupy white-collar positions

B) Interviews with married men indicating that they are now doing some household tasks

C) Surveys of the labor market documenting the recent creation of a new class of jobs in electronics in which women workers outnumber men four to one

D) Census results showing that working women's wages and salaries are, on the average, as high as those of working men

E) Enrollment figures from universities demonstrating that increasing numbers of young women are choosing to continue their education beyond the undergraduate level.

As highlighted in the paragraph..

The author feels that little has changed in the conditions in which the women work.

He feels that the pay is very low to women compared to men..

So author will agree that the conditions have altered if, the pay packages are improved.. thats what is precisely present in CHOICE D.

[rezwan]

The answer key is given to be D .... does bigbook provide wrong answers??

[rezwan]

opps sorry ... please ignore my previous comment ...