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Historians of women's labor in the United States at first largely disregarded the story of female service workers -women earning wages in occupations such as salesclerk. domestic servant, and office secretary. These historians (5) focused instead on factory work, primarily because it seemed so different from traditional, unpaid "women's work" in the home, and because the underlying economic forces of industrialism were presumed to be gender-blind and hence emancipatory in effect. Unfortunately, emanci- (10) pation has been less profound than expected, for not even industrial wage labor has escaped continued sex segre- gation in the workplace. To explain this unfinished revolution in the status of women, historians have recently begun to emphasize the ( 15) way a prevailing definition of femininity often etermines the kinds of work allocated to women, even when such allocation is inappropriate to new conditions. For instance, early textile-mill entrepreneurs, in justifying women's employment in wage labor, made much of the assumption (20) that women were by nature skillful at detailed tasks and patient in carrying out repetitive chores; the mill owners thus imported into the new industrial order hoary stereo- types associated with the homemaking activities they presumed to have been the purview of women. Because (25) women accepted the more unattractive new industrial tasks more readily than did men, such jobs came to be regarded as female jobs. And employers, who assumed that women's "real" aspirations were for marriage and family life. declined to pay women wages commensurate with those of (30) men. Thus many lower-skilled, lower-paid, less secure jobs came to be perceived as "female." More remarkable than the origin has been the persistence of such sex segregation in twentieth-century industry. Once an occupation came to be perceived as "female." employers (35) showed surprisingly little interest in changing that perception, even when higher profits beckoned. And despite the urgent need of the United States during the Second World War to mobilize its human resources fully, job segregation by sex characterized even the most important 40) war industries. Moreover, once the war ended, employers quickly returned to men most of the "male" jobs that women had been permitted to master. 7. Which of the following words best expresses the opinion of the author of the passage concerning the notion that women are more skillful than men in carrying out detailed tasks? (A) "patient" (line 21) (B) "repetitive" (line 21) (C) "hoary" (line 22) (D) "homemaking" (line 23) (E) "purview" (line 24) 8. Which of the following best describes the relationship of the final paragraph to the passage as a whole? (A) The central idea is reinforced by the citation of evidence drawn from twentieth-century history. (B) The central idea is restated in such a way as to form a transition to a new topic for discussion. (C) The central idea is restated and juxtaposed with evidence that might appear to contradic it. (D) A partial exception to the generalizations of the central idea is dismissed as unimportant. (E) Recent history is cited to suggest that the central idea's validity is gradually diminishing. 答案是7选a，8选c 7完全不懂，觉得一个也不对。8觉得a比c更好。 盼高手指教！ | 
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发表于 2008-9-5 21:06:00
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