Reading Comprehension

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 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,
emancipation has been less profound than expected,
for not even industrial wage labor has escaped
continued GMAT segregation in the workplace.

To explain this unfinished revolution in the
status of women, historians have recently begun
to emphasize the way a prevailing definition of
femininity often determines 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 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 stereotypes associated
with the homemaking activities they presumed to
have been the purview of women. Because 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 men. Thus many
lower-skilled, lower-paid, less secure jobs came to be
perceived as "female."

More remarkable than the original has been the
persistence of such GMAT segregation in twentiethcentury
industry. Once an occupation came to be
perceived as "female," employers 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 GMAT characterized even the most important war
industries. Moreover, once the war ended, employers
quickly returned to men most of the "male" jobs that
women had been permitted to master.

According to the passage, historians of women's labor focused on factory work as a more promising area of research than service-sector work because factory work

(A) involved the payment of higher wages
(B) required skill in detailed tasks
(C) was assumed to be less characterized by GMAT segregation
(D) was more readily accepted by women than by men
(E) fitted the economic dynamic of industrialism better

bryan88 wrote: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 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,
emancipation has been less profound than expected,
for not even industrial wage labor has escaped
continued GMAT segregation in the workplace.

To explain this unfinished revolution in the
status of women, historians have recently begun
to emphasize the way a prevailing definition of
femininity often determines 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 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 stereotypes associated
with the homemaking activities they presumed to
have been the purview of women. Because 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 men. Thus many
lower-skilled, lower-paid, less secure jobs came to be
perceived as "female."

More remarkable than the original has been the
persistence of such GMAT segregation in twentiethcentury
industry. Once an occupation came to be
perceived as "female," employers 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 GMAT characterized even the most important war
industries. Moreover, once the war ended, employers
quickly returned to men most of the "male" jobs that
women had been permitted to master.

According to the passage, historians of women's labor focused on factory work as a more promising area of research than service-sector work because factory work

(A) involved the payment of higher wages
(B) required skill in detailed tasks
(C) was assumed to be less characterized by GMAT segregation
(D) was more readily accepted by women than by men
(E) fitted the economic dynamic of industrialism better

RC is an OPEN BOOK TEST.
The correct answer is somewhere in the passage; our job is to find it.
The correct answer must be directly supported by lines in the passage.

Step 1: Identify the KEY WORDS in the question.
The key words here are historians of women's labor focused on factory work.

Step 2: Find the WINDOW.
Locate where the passage discusses the key words.
The WINDOW is from a few lines above to a few lines below the key words.
Read CAREFULLY.

Step 3: Use PROCESS OF ELIMINATION.
Find the answer choice directly supported by the window in the passage.
Eliminate answer choices that are not supported.

From paragraph 1:
These historians focused instead on factory
work...because the underlying economic forces of
industrialism were presumed to be GENDER-BLIND.

The lines above support answer choice C: Factory work was assumed to be less characterized by GMAT segregation.

The correct answer is C.