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  3. Scholars are often greatly excited by "natural experiments", events that end

Scholars are often greatly excited by "natural experiments", events that end

游客2023-08-04  31
问题     Scholars are often greatly excited by "natural experiments", events that end up separating two groups of people, allowing wonks (用功而严肃的人) to compare their subsequent behaviour. Much like the study of twins adopted into different households, the postwar division and eventual reunification of Germany could be seen as such an experiment. A report by the German Institute for Economic Research on working mothers is published ahead of the 30th anniversary of reunification on October 3rd.
    When the German Democratic Republic (GDR) in the east united with the Federal Republic of Germany (FRG) in 1990, the mothers of young children led very different lives. Life expectancy and incomes were much lower in the east, mothers were almost as likely to work as fathers, and most worked full-time. In the west, where state and church encouraged mums to stay at home, less than half were in paid employment, and most of those worked part-time.
    Three decades on, how has the picture changed? Two things stand out. First, behaviour has changed drastically since unification: the share of eastern women with young children working full-time fell from over half in 1990 to just under a third in 2018. More women across Germany are working part-time. Second, east-west differences still exist. The share of eastern mums in full-time work is more than double that in the west. As a result, whereas women in the east earn 7％ less than men, the gap in the west is 22％. The report argues that policy and attitudes together explain these trends.
    Policy seems to play a powerful role in explaining the collapse in full-time employment in the east. Despite some recent changes, the policies of unified Germany, like those of the FRG, still assume that women are wives and mothers first.
    Attitudes, meanwhile, may help explain part of the lasting hours gap between east and west: 30 years after unification, eastern women are still more likely to approve of full-time working mums. This chimes with earlier findings that east Germans are more likely to have an egalitarian (平等主义的) view of the roles of the sexes. Attitudes have also changed over time, though. Strikingly, women born after 1975 in both the east and west are more likely to disapprove of mothers in full-time work than older ones, putting paid to the idea that younger women are keener on work. Perhaps women’s views are shaped by the policies they face.
    The unification "experiment" hardly took place in laboratory conditions. Many women migrated from east to west. The regions differ in many other respects—incomes per head are lower in the east, for instance—that also affect the number of hours women work. But the episode still says something about the power of policy and the endurance of attitudes, long after walls are torn down. [br] What does the author say about policy?
选项 A、It may influence attitudes in the long run.
B、It makes women cut down working hours.
C、It still differs in the east and west of Germany.
D、It may intensify gender income differences.
答案 A
解析 由题干中的policy定位到第三段最后一句、第四段及第五段最后一句。推理判断题。第三段最后一句提到政策和态度是造成女性全职就业趋势变化的原因，第四、五段则对这两方面进行具体阐述。第五段最后一句指出，或许女性的观点是由她们所面临的政策决定的，结合该段第三句说到的，随着时间的推移，人们的态度也发生了变化，可知A“从长远来看，政策可能会影响人们的态度”与原文信息一致，故选A。由第四段第一句可知，政策可能导致了东德从事全职工作的妈妈的人数下降，而非所有女性的工作时长减少，故排除B。
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