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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
(5) 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, emanci-
(10) pation has been less profound than expected, for not even
industrial wage labor has escaped continued sex segre-
gation in the workplace.
To explain this unfinished revolution in the status of
women, historians have recently begun to emphasize the
( 15) way a prevailing definition of femininity often etermines
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
(20) 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 stereo-
types associated with the homemaking activities they
presumed to have been the purview of women. Because
(25) 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
(30) men. Thus many lower-skilled, lower-paid, less secure jobs
came to be perceived as “female.”
More remarkable than the origin has been the persistence
of such sex segregation in twentieth-century industry. Once
an occupation came to be perceived as “female.” employers
(35) 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
40) war industries. Moreover, once the war ended, employers
quickly returned to men most of the “male” jobs that
women had been permitted to master.
1. According to the passage, job segregation by sex in the
United States was
(A) greatly diminlated by labor mobilization during the
Second World War
(B) perpetuated by those textile-mill owners who argued
in favor of women’s employment in wage labor
(C) one means by which women achieved greater job
security
(D) reluctantly challenged by employers except when
the economic advantages were obvious
(E) a constant source of labor unrest in the young textile
industry
2. 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 sex
segregation
(D) was more readily accepted by women than by men
(E) fitted the economic dynamic of industrialism better
3. It can be inferred from the passage that early historians
of women’s labor 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) women’s employment in the service sector tended to
be much more short-term than in factory work
(E) employment in the service sector seemed to have
much in common with the unpaid work associated
with homemaking
4. 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
labor force as a means to keep men’s 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.
(E) They felt guilty about disturbing the traditional
division of labor in family.
5. It can be inferred from the passage that the “unfinished
revolution” the author mentions in line 13 refers to
the
(A) entry of women into the industrial labor market
(B) recognition that work done by women as
homemakers should be compensated at rates
comparable to those prevailing in the service sector
of the economy
(C) development of a new definition of femininity
unrelated to the economic forces of industrialism
(D) introduction of equal pay for equal work in all
professions
(E) emancipation of women wage earners from gender-
determined job allocation
6. The passage supports which of the following statements
about hiring policies in the United States?
(A) After a crisis many formerly “male” jobs are
reclassified as “female” jobs.
(B) Industrial employers generally prefer to hire women
with previous experience as homemakers.
(C) Post-Second World War hiring policies caused
women to lose many of their wartime gains in
employment opportunity.
(D) Even war industries during the Second World War
were reluctant to hire women for factory work.
(E) The service sector of the economy has proved more
nearly gender-blind in its hiring policies than has the
manufacturing sector.
7. Which of the following words best expresses the opinion
of the author of the passage concerning the notion that
women are more skillful than men in carrying out
detailed tasks?
(A) “patient” (line 21)
(B) “repetitive” (line 21)
(C) “hoary” (line 22)
(D) “homemaking” (line 23)
(E) “purview” (line 24)
8. Which of the following best describes the relationship of
the final paragraph to the passage as a whole?
(A) The central idea is reinforced by the citation of
evidence drawn from twentieth-century history.
(B) The central idea is restated in such a way as to form
a transition to a new topic for discussion.
(C) The central idea is restated and juxtaposed with
evidence that might appear to contradic it.
(D) A partial exception to the generalizations of the
central idea is dismissed as unimportant.
(E) Recent history is cited to suggest that the central
idea’s validity is gradually diminishing.