Reading comprehension home Exercise- 09, PASSAGE B

Historians of women’s labour 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 emancipator in effect. Unfortunately, emancipation has been less profound than expected, for not even industrial wage labour has escaped continued sex 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 labour, made much of the assumption that women were by nature skilful 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 those 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 sex segregation in twentieth-century 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 sex characterized even the most important war industries. Moreover, once the war ended, employers quickly returned to men most of the “male” jobs women had been permitted to master.

4.       According to the passage, job segregation by sex in the United States was

A.      Greatly diminished by labour mobilization during the Second World War

B.      Perpetuated by those textile-mill owners who argued in favour of women’s employment in wage labour

C.      One means by which women achieved greater job security

D.      Reluctantly challenged by employers except when the economic advantages were obvious

5.       According to the passage, historians of women’s labour 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 sex segregation

D.      Ws more readily accepted by women than by men

6.       It can be inferred from the passage that early historians of women’s labour in the United States paid little attention to women’s employment in the service sector of the economy because

A.      The extreme variety of these occupations made it very difficult to assemble meaningful statistics about them

B.      Fewer women found employment in the service sector than in factory work

C.      The wages paid to workers in the service sector were much lower than those paid in the industrial sector.

D.      Employment in the service sector seemed to have much in common with the unpaid work associated with homemaking

7.        The passage supports which of the following statements about the early mill owners mentioned in the second paragraph?

A.      They hoped that by creating relatively unattractive “female “jobs they would discourage women from losing interest in marriage and family life.

B.      They sought to increase the size of the available labour force as a means to keep men’s wages low.

C.      They argued that women were inherently suited to do well in particular kinds of factory work.

D.      They thought that factory work bettered the condition of women by emancipating them from dependence on income earned by men.

Answer:

4.       B    the second paragraph explains that a prevailing definition of femininity often dictates what jobs are given to women. For example, textile –mill owners used hoary stereotypes associated with…. Homemaking activities in order to justify their employment of women, claiming that women were by nature skilful at detailed tasks and patient in carrying out repetitive chores.

5.       C    look at the first paragraph, which discusses historians of women’s labour. These historians disregarded service work in favour of factory work not only because factory work differed from traditional “women’s work, “but also because the forces of industrialism were presumed to be gender- blind.

6.        D    To answer this question, look at what the first paragraph says about the historians focus work. The historians disregarded service work and focused instead on factory work in part because it seemed so different from traditional, unpaid “women’s work” in the home. Since the two kinds of work are explicitly contrasted, it is reasonable to infer that what is not true of factory work is true of service work; service work is similar to traditional, unpaid “women’s work” in the home.

7.       C    Look at the second paragraph to see what it says about the assumptions and actions of the mill owners. The mill owners accepted and perpetuated the stereotypes of women, including their greater attention to detail and patience with repetitive tasks, and thus argued that women were inherently (by nature) suited to the work in a textile mill.