Critical Reasoning

I remember this CR question.It is from one of the gmat paper tests

You can solve this one by adopting the following approach:

The question asks: Which of the following UNDERMINES the conclusion

The conclusion here is that 'few women win elections because they do not want to run and not because they have difficulty winning elections'

Your thought should be - hmm to undermine this conclusion, i need to find an answer choice that states women as wanting to run for the elections but being faced with difficulties winning.

The only answer that even remotely hints at showing women as wanting to run in elections is E; to add to that it also states that they are faced with difficulty winning (lack of funding). Choice E is the exact opposite of the conclusion and hence best undermines it.

The answer is surely E cz it clearly undermines the given argument

but how do we solve these questions with cause and effect relationship is there any strategy??

nitin9003 wrote:The answer is surely E cz it clearly undermines the given argument

but how do we solve these questions with cause and effect relationship is there any strategy??

Hi Nitin,

Whenever your are weakening a causal argument--"X causes Y"--you will almost invariably find that the answer takes one of two forms:

1) The is an unrelated/underlying cause for Y. "In fact, Z causes Y" or "A change in Z is responsible for the increase in both X and Y."

2) Cause and Effect are reversed. "Actually, Y causes X, not the other way around."

Keep looking for these patterns and you're sure to beat the GMAT. Best of luck!

When I initially did this question the answer I went with was A. I found B-D very easy to eliminate and was stuck between A and E. After reading the above responses I can now see why E is the better choice - but at the time my reasoning was as follows:

Authors conclusion is essentially that women win few elections, not because they find winning hard but because they don't want to run. The text provided in choice a) contradicts this conclusion by providing evidence that women do actually find it tougher 'to win' than men (i.e., there is a lower % of winners among women, than there is winners among men)

As you can see, I kind of brushed over the fact that these were re-election stats rather than stats for all elections - and thus I ended up getting it wrong.

Grrrrrrrrrr

Conclusion = 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.

From stem = only about fifteen percent of the candidates for these offices were women

So author is assuming that the fact that few women were candidates shows that women didn't want to run in the first place. and that is the cause for less women.

To weaken the conclusion - show that there is no direct relationship between no of women running and no of women who actually want to run.

Looking at all the choices... only E says that women want to run but can't due to lack of adequate funding for their campaigns

Hence E

e. it is the only answer that weakens the statement.

IMO E .
'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' is the conclusion.
In the answer there is an alternate reason given 'do not because they cannot get adequate funding for their campaigns' which weakens the argument.

B is the answer.

By POE,

IMO B.

Most of the replies here denote E to be the answer. However, I perceive E to reason the agreed conclusion that 'women have difficulty in winning elections'. E says what difficulty women face which is not our concern.

ans is E

The answer here is E.

This is not an LSAT question. I have searched and it is not. krishnakumarhod indicates that this is an older GMAT question from the paper tests.

This question is indeed an example of cause and effect. The effect is the thing that is observed and is not debatable. In this case we have observed that women win fewer elections. This is what needs to be explained. It says so right in the stimulus, "the reason there are so few women who win elections for these offices..." so you can see that we are trying to explain why women win few elections.

Now the cause it the thing that we want to weaken. In the stimulus they say the cause is that - and here the wording is very important "so few women want to run." So that is what they are saying that women do not want to run and that is why the do not win the elections. Now, the evidence for women not wanting to run is that only 15% of candidates for office are women.

Now we need to show a different reason, consistent with that evidence, that will explain why only 15% of the candidates are women. So we do not want to say that the women do not want to run for office but that there is another reason. The other reason is found in choice E -- the women may want to run but they do not because they cannot get adequate funding their campaigns. So this is a different cause and weakens the argument.

Choice B is not particularly relevant as it just says that the women do not run against other women. This is to be expected since there are only 15% of candidates that are women and so rather than explaining why so few women run it is a consequence of so few women running. It is not the cause but rather another effect and so cannot be the answer.

Break cause-effect. It's not that women don't WANT to; it's that they CAN'T.

E ! Since this is a weaken type question..there is definitely a reasoning error and also new information is allowed to be introduced! In this case..E brings in the dimension of "lack of funds"...which gives the reason as to why women are not able to run for such offices!

the Conclusion drawn by the author --> so few women who win elections for these offices .....

based on the assumption --> is not that women have difficulty winning elections but that so few women want to run.

Now lets analyse option A --> Last year the proportion of women incumbents who won reelection was smaller than the proportion of men incumbents who won reelection.

This means even in Re-election(which is also a kind of election)women did not stand a chance against men...i.e. they have DIFFICULTY in winning over their male counterparts

Would request DanaJ or Ian Stewart to help as I am new to BTG and have been a follower of ur posts since...NOM!

PLEASE clarify in case I am wrong.