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 slowed any change in the traditional position of women both in the labor market and in the home.

 

长文章

涉及弱势群体——妇女题材

典型代表：妇女  黑人  其他少数民族

1. Which of the following statements best summarizes the main idea of the passage?

   (A) The effects of the mechanization of women's work have not borne out the frequently held assumption that new technology is inherently revolutionary.

   (B) Recent studies have shown that mechanization revolutionizes a society's traditional values and the customary roles of its members.

   (C) Mechanization has caused the nature of women's work to change since the Industrial Revolution.

   (D) The mechanization of work creates whole new classes of jobs that did not previously exist.

   (E) The mechanization of women's work, while extremely revolutionary it its effects, has not, on the whole, had the deleterious effects that some critics had feared.

 

2. The author mentions all of the following inventions as examples of dramatic technological innovations EXCEPT the

   (A) sewing machine

   (B) vacuum cleaner

   (C) typewriter

   (D) telephone

   (E) spinning jenny

 

3. It can be inferred from the passage that, before the Industrial Revolution, the majority of women's work was done in which of the following settings?

   (A) Textile mills

   (B) Private households

   (C) Offices

   (D) Factories

   (E) Small shops

 

4. 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

 

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