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Gender Inequality In Western society, traditional

游客2024-02-16  19
问题                            Gender Inequality
    In Western society, traditional male and female roles are not only substantially different, but also highly unequal. As we have seen, the male is given the dominant position. In a sense he is the star actor, whereas the female often plays only a supporting role. Psychologically, the male is trained to play the role of decision maker, whereas the female is encouraged to be submissive and obedient. This same gender inequality is reflected in our basic institutions. In education, employment, and politics, women clearly are treated as inferiors.
    Education
    In the past, women faced open discrimination in almost every aspect of our educational system. Far more boys than girls were enrolled in primary and secondary schools, and most of the best colleges did not admit women at all. Changing cultural expectations and new antidiscrimination laws broke down most of these barriers, and great progress has been made. Today, more females than males graduate from high school and from college.
    Yet men still maintain some important educational advantages. For one thing, men receive over 60 percent of professional degrees and doctorates. There are also important differences in the majors women and men pursue. More females are in the liberal arts and humanities, while more men major in such fields as science, mathematics, and engineering, which are most likely to lead directly to high-paying career. Although the reasons for these differences are not entirely clear, several factors appear to be important. It seems that traditional gender role stereotypes no longer stop females from pursuing an education, but women are discouraged from going into academic areas that are overwhelmingly dominated by males. For example, one recent study shows that the lack of female role models among faculty members in mathematics, science, and engineering subtly conveys the message to young women that those fields are not for them. Women’s preference for a more general liberal education may also reflect the fact that women expect to carry more child-rearing responsibilities than their male counterparts. As a result, they may shy away from majors leading to demanding careers that would interfere with those responsibilities.
    Employment
    Women’s role in the work force has undergone a remarkable change. Fifty years ago, fewer than a quarter of all adult women in the United States worked outside the home. Today, that figure has more than doubled, and the number of working women continues to increase. In the next decade, six of every ten new workers in the United States are expected to be women. Although the gap between men’s and women’s pay has narrowed in recent years, it continues to be a large one. In 1975 women earned only about 60 percent as much as men, but by 1992, that figure was around 75 percent. Unfortunately, the reason the gap has closed is due more to a decline in men’s earnings than to an increase in women’s pay. An analysis by the Economic Policy Institute concluded that over two-thirds of that improvement was caused by the drop in men’s wages and only a third by increasing women’s wages.
    Many women receive smaller paychecks than men because they enter lower-paying occupations and hold lower-ranking jobs within their field. Yet there are substantial differences in pay even among men and women who do the same type of work. Women in sales earn only 56 percent as much as salesmen, and women professionals about 72 percent as much as their male counterparts. A Business Week survey found that the starting salaries of male graduates of the best MBA programs in the United States are 12 percent higher than the starting salaries of female graduates. Even when workers break out of the traditional occupational stereotypes, women still come up short. Although 94 percent of all registered nurses are female, male nurses earn about 10 percent more than their female co-workers. Women who cross the gender barrier to join the building trades, on the other hand, earn about 25 percent less than male construction workers.
    Many occupations are clearly "sex-typed"; that is, they are considered either men’s jobs or women’s jobs. Almost 60 percent of all university professors are men, as are 86 percent of police officers and 92 percent of engineers. In contrast, 75 percent of primary and secondary teachers, 84 percent of librarians, and 98 percent of all secretaries are women. "Women’s jobs" almost always have lower pay and lower status than comparable "male" positions. Jobs that are relatively autonomous are usually typed as male, as in the case of truck drivers or traveling sales personnel.
    There are, nonetheless, some hopeful signs. As Francine D. Blau and Marianne A. Ferber point out, there has been a slow but steady decrease in occupational segregation since the 1960s, and many women have managed to breach the walls that kept them out of better-paying "men’s jobs". In 1960, only about 6.5 percent of U.S. physicians were women; today that number is over 20 percent. Women have made similar strides in the legal profession: In 1960, fewer than 1 out of 20 lawyers and judges was a woman, but today the ratio is more than 1 in 5.
    Political Power
    Politics has traditionally been considered a man’s business. Women were not even allowed to vote in most democracies until this century. The few women who have gained top positions of power have often had the benefit of family connections to overcome objections to their sex.
    In 1993, only 7 percent of the members of the U.S. Senate and 11 percent of the House were women. No woman has ever held a key position of power in the U.S. Congress, such as majority leader or Speaker of the House, and women are still largely locked out of the inner circles of power in the White House—including, of course, the presidency itself. In the judicial branch, only two women in the history of the United States have ever been on the Supreme Court.
    Women, nonetheless, have enormous political potential. Most of the volunteer workers essential to political campaigns are women. Even more significant is the fact that women outnumber men and could outvote them if they voted as a block. Until recently, women voted much as their husbands did, but in the last decade a significant "gender gap" between the voting patterns of men and women had developed. Polls show that women look more favorably on welfare programs and environmental protection and are more likely to oppose military spending and an aggressive foreign policy. In the last three presidential elections, substantially more women than men voted for the Democratic candidate. So far, the gender gap has not been a decisive factor in U.S. politics, but the potential is certainly there. [br] The pay gap between women and men tends to be bigger.
选项 A、Y
B、N
C、NG
答案 B
解析 第四段第五句“Although the gap…be a large one”的大意是：尽管男女之间的报酬差别近年来有所缩小，但这种差别还是很大。句中的“narrow”一词在本句中用作动词，意为“缩小”，与题干中的“tend to be bigger”为反义词。
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