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  3. Women are on the verge of outnumbering men in the workforce for the first time, a historic reversal caused by long-term changes

Women are on the verge of outnumbering men in the workforce for the first time, a historic reversal caused by long-term changes

admin2016-10-07  33
问题     Women are on the verge of outnumbering men in the workforce for the first time, a historic reversal caused by long-term changes in women’s roles and massive job losses for men during this recession.
    Women held 49.83% of the nation’s 132 million jobs in June and they’re gaining the vast majority of jobs in the few sectors of the economy that are growing, according to the most recent numbers available from the Bureau of Labor Statistics. That’s a record high for a measure that’s been growing steadily for decades and accelerating during the recession. At the current pace, women will become a majority of workers in October or November.
    "Women have struggled long and hard to get to this point," says labor economist Heidi Hartmann, president of the Institute for Women’s Policy Research.
    The change reflects the growing importance of women as wage earners, but it doesn’t show full equality, Hartmann says. On average, women work fewer hours than men, hold more part-time jobs and earn 77% of what men make, she says. Men also still dominate higher-paying executive ranks.
    Women have been a growing share of the once heavily male labor force for nearly a century, recording big bumps during epoch-making events such as World War n. This time, the boost came from a severe recession that has been brutal on male-dominated professions such as construction and manufacturing.
    The only parts of the economy still growing—health care, education and government—have traditionally hired mostly women. That dominance has increased in part because federal stimulus funding directed money to education, health care and state and local governments.
    The gender transformation is especially remarkable in local government’s 14.6 million-person workforce. Cities, schools, water authorities and other local legal power have cut 86,000 men from payrolls during the recession—while adding 167,000 women, according to the Bureau of Labor Statistics.
    Equality in workforce numbers reflects a long-term cultural change, says Maureen Honey, author of Creating Rosie the Riveter, a book about the government’s campaign to persuade women to work outside the home during World War II. "The image that the man has to be the breadwinner has changed," Honey says.
The passage mainly illustrates the point that_____.
选项 A、equality in workforce number is a cultural issue
B、women will soon become a majority of workers
C、women should not be restrained inside the home
D、the recession has severely changed the workforce
答案B
解析 本文首句首先指出了本文的论题，然后作者通过列数字、举例、引用等方式证明这个论题，最后一段利用Maureen Honey的话对本文论题作了总结，全文首句和末句都强调了“女性就业人数将超过男性”这个观点，B与此同义，为本题答案。
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大学英语四级

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