Johanna Levelt Sengers stands at the top of her profession but confesses that " it can be a little lonely" as one of only two wo

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问题     Johanna Levelt Sengers stands at the top of her profession but confesses that " it can be a little lonely" as one of only two women in the 82-member engineering sciences section of the U.S. National Academy of Sciences(NAS). A scientist emeritus at the National Institute of Standards and Technology, she belongs to both NAS and its partner, the National Academy of Engineering, where she’s one of seven women within the 173-member chemical engineering section. So in late 2004, when she was asked to co-chair an international panel on women in science with Manju Sharma of India, they decided to examine not just women’s place in society but also their status within the 90 national academies that had requested the report.
    The report, posted last week by the Inter Academy Council(IAC), offers a refreshingly candid assessment of the problems facing women trying to enter and move up in the world of science and engineering. Although it strikes familiar chords about the need to remove barriers and increase opportunities for girls and women, it sings a new tune in commanding the national academies themselves to "first put their own houses in order. " In addition to choosing more women as members and leaders of their organizations, each national academy should form a standing committee on diversity to gather and discuss gender-related data, it says.
    "Wow. This is far more hard-hitting and to the point than I had expected," says Donna Dean, president of the Association for Women in Science in Washington, D. C. , and a former senior administrator at the National Institutes of Health, who is now at the Washington, D. C. , science-lobbying firm of Lewis-Burke Associates. "It tells the various academies to stop pontificating about the right thing to do and start showing it in how they operate. "
    The report was funded in part by a $50,000 grant from L’Oreal. Since 1998, the France-based cosmetics company has honored outstanding women scientists around the world—including five of the eight women on the 10-person IAC panel. Jennifer Campbell, who heads the company’s philanthropic efforts, says she would like to see across-the-board parity for women in science. But Levelt Sengers says she thinks that "a reasonable goal would be no major disparity between the percentage of Ph. D. degrees awarded to women in a particular field and the percentage elected in that field. " Most academies are a far cry from reaching even that level.
    NAS President Ralph Cicerone says that there’s "no magic bullet" for adding women to the academy’s ranks but that NAS is trying to increase their chances of gaining the type of recognition—through service on academy panels, keynote speeches, and major scientific awards—that traditionally leads to NAS membership. NAS has no plans "to collapse its activities into one committee on gender issues," he says, adding that the challenge calls for "a sustained effort... along the entire pipeline."
What can we learn from the passage?

选项 A、The present situation of women’s social status is satisfying.
B、NAS will address gender-related problems one by one.
C、The report posted by IAC doesn’t give a clear evaluation of gender problems.
D、The only aim of the report was to remove barriers and increase chances for women.

答案B

解析 主旨大意题。解答该题需要理解全文。最后一段第一句谈到“没有‘魔术弹’能够一下子提高女性在科学院的地位”,同时在最后一句也提及“国家科学院尚无计划‘专门成立一个委员会处理女性的问题’,这种挑战需要‘按照全局计划……做出持续努力’”,也就是说NAS会逐个解决女性问题,故选[B]。通篇看来,文章谈到目前女性所面临的这些问题亟待解决,因此谈不上“令人满意”,故排除[A];第二段谈到该报告提供了一个“全新的、公正的透析”,而且指出该报告“重弹了一些有关为女性剔除障碍、增加机会的老调,也唱响了一支责令国家科学团体本身‘首先处理好内部存在的女性问题’的新曲”,因此[C]、[D]也排除。
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