Critical Reasoning

I think option E is correct.But I am still confused with the options A and E...

akashamrev wrote:I think option E is correct.But I am still confused with the options A and E...

Last year in the United States, women who ran for state and national offices were about as likely to win as men. However, only about fifteen percent of the candidates for these offices were women. Therefore, the reason there are so few women who win elections for these offices is not that women have difficulty winning elections but that so few women want to run.
Which of the following, if true, most seriously undermines the conclusion given?

Reason states for women not winning elections:Only few women want to run for the election and there is no other specific reason!!!

(A) Last year the proportion of women incumbents who won reelection was smaller than the proportion of men incumbents who won reelection.
(B) Few women who run for state and national offices run against other women.
(C) Most women who have no strong desire to be politicians never run for state and national offices.
(D) The proportion of people holding local offices who are women is smaller than the proportion of people holding state and national offices who are women.
(E) Many more women than men who want to run for state and national offices do not because they cannot get adequate funding for their campaigns.

E says, Women do not run for elections because they lack funding!! - Gives us an valid reason which undermines the original

IMO:E

Hope it helps!!

I got on A. But seeing the explanation E really stands tall. Thanks for the question.

+1 for E. OA please.

Great !
E +1

Answer E clearly.
My explanation:
The stimulus contains a causal conclusion.
Few women want to run (A) --> Few women in the office(B).
To weaken a causal conclusion like this we have to show anyone of the following:
i) B--> A
ii) C(some other event) --> B
iii) The data/sample biaes
iv) A ocurred bu B did not (in terms of example)
v) B occurred , A did not (in terms of example)

Looking at the options (E) fits into category (ii).
(E) says, Women get inadequate funding for election campaign( C) ---> Few women in office.Hence (E) is correct.
(A) objects stated fact that women and men have equal probability to win in any election (be in reelection which is also an election.) Any special characteristics of relection is not suggested.
(B)Irrelavant
(C)Irrelevant
(D) Diferentiation between local and state/national election is off-topic.

I agree with the OA:E.
However I have a confusion regarding the interpretation of A.
It says that women who earned re-election were less than men who won re-election.So, it may be concluded that women are as likely as men to win an election, but they are not as likely as men to win re-election.And hence this was the reason that women were just 15% of them were in office.Hence this weakens the conclusion that is based upon this fact and hence subsequently weakens the arguemtn.
Somebody please tell where is my reasoning wrong ?

Thanks.

This is getting to be a long thread so I thought I should jump back in!

Let's look at A since there have been some questions about it.

A says "(A) Last year the proportion of women incumbents who won reelection was smaller than the proportion of men incumbents who won reelection."

So what we can see here from the start is that you are only talking about women who have already been elected and who are running for re-election. So one big problem with this is that you need to have the women elected first, before they can run for re-election.

The conclusion that we are trying to weaken is that the cause of so few women winning is that so few women want to run for office. We can see that this conclusion really is not well related to the very small group of women who would be running for re-election. Choice A does not do what we need - namely to explain why women are not elected IN THE FIRST PLACE."

The other problem with choice A is that it only says that "the proportion of women incumbents who won reelection was smaller than the proportion of men incumbents who won reelection" So this allows the percentage of men who get re-elected to be like 99% and then the percentage of women who get re-elected could be 95%. So how does saying that 95% of women get re-elected explain how so few women win elections??

Words matter in the critical reasoning. Look at what A really says. It does not weaken the conclusion because it does not give us a cause for why only 15% of women win elections. It talks about re-elections and does so in a way that does not really make any limitations on the success of the women (other than that it is less than the men).

I think sometimes people read things perhaps a little charitably!! They fill in the holes that are there. Perhaps this is because we are used to doing this on a daily basis in modern life. Here is an article that I wrote a few months ago that talks about being less charitable on the GMAT!
https://www.beatthegmat.com/mba/2011/03/ ... n-the-gmat

I would go with (E) as it shows that women wants to run but cannot run because of another reason (inadequate funding).

E it is

E wins. Lets see the reasoning:

Conclusion: The reason there are so few women who win elections for these offices is not that women have difficulty winning elections but that so few women want to run.

(A) Last year the proportion of women incumbents who won reelection was smaller than the proportion of men incumbents who won reelection. This statement is not relevant to our conclusion. We dont care about last year results because we dont have any information that can link to our conclusion.

(B) Few women who run for state and national offices run against other women. This could actually weaken the conclusion, but again this is not as strong as E. We dont know how many women run against other women and whether does this actually impact the election in a significant way.

(C) Most women who have no strong desire to be politicians never run for state and national offices.
If anything, this could probably strengthen our conclusion, far from weakening it.

(D) The proportion of people holding local offices who are women is smaller than the proportion of people holding state and national offices who are women. This again is not relevant.

(E) Many more women than men who want to run for state and national offices do not because they cannot get adequate funding for their campaigns. Correct. It is not because women dont want to run for election, but rather it is because women are unable to get sufficient funding for their campaigns.

In the end, E actually comes out to be the obvious choice.

DanaJ wrote:I would definitely eliminate A because it seems to talk about something besides the point. Yes, reelection is a subset of election, but we are interested in the much broader group of elections in general and not just reelections. Just because it's true that birds fly, it doesn't mean that all warm blooded animals fly - even though birds are warm blooded.

It's also a bit harsh to say that women did not stand a chance against men simply because the argument never goes that far. We only know that the proportion was smaller, but it could be that it was smaller by maybe 1%, which isn't that much.

My doubt is the following,
The conclusion states that: ' Therefore, the reason there are so few women who win elections for these offices is not that women have difficulty winning elections but that so few women want to run.'

Choice E: tells that many want to run for elections but they cant due to lack of funding.
So it tells not about women winning but about very few women running for elections.

That way does E strengthen the conclusion ?

No E does not strengthen. Remember the conclusion here is sort of a cause and effect. We know that few women win elections for office compared to me. We are also given the reason for this..."so few women want to run." That is the key part of the conclusion. When you get an argument where one thing is supposed to cause the other, the cause is always the conclusion. So to weaken this we are going to say that the cause is NOT that the women do not want to run, but something else.

So E does this job and weakens. The women fail to run for and win elections not because they do not want to run, but because they cannot get the funding.

For E to strengthen it would need to reinforce that women do not WANT to run. So something like "Women see that politics is a dirty game and that very little gets accomplished and so they choose not run for office." That would strengthen the conclusion. The current answer choice E does not.

Hope it helps!

IMO E. Weaken so looking for Alternative explanation to "few woman want to run". E says alternative explanation is no funding.

IMO E that give the main reason why women cannot run for federal election. Although I do not attend to B, I want to thank all guys about explanation above