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Women are on the verge of outnumbering men in the workforce for the first time, a historic reversal caused by long-term changes

admin2016-04-30  36
问题     Women are on the verge of outnumbering men in the workforce for the first time, a historic reversal caused by long-term changes in women’s roles and massive job losses for men during this recession.
    Women held 49.83% of the nation’s 132 million jobs in June and they’re gaining the vast majority of jobs in the few sectors of the economy that are growing, according to the most recent numbers available from the Bureau of Labor Statistics. That’s a record high for a measure that’s been growing steadily for decades and accelerating during the recession. At the current pace, women will become a majority of workers in October or November.
    "Women have struggled long and hard to get to this point," says labor economist Heidi Hartmann, president of the Institute for Women’s Policy Research.
    The change reflects the growing importance of women as wage earners, but it doesn’t show full equality, Hartmann says. On average, women work fewer hours than men, hold more part-time jobs and earn 77% of what men make, she says. Men also still dominate higher-paying executive ranks.
    Women have been a growing share of the once heavily male labor force for nearly a century, recording big bumps during epoch-making events such as World War n. This time, the boost came from a severe recession that has been brutal on male-dominated professions such as construction and manufacturing.
    The only parts of the economy still growing—health care, education and government—have traditionally hired mostly women. That dominance has increased in part because federal stimulus funding directed money to education, health care and state and local governments.
    The gender transformation is especially remarkable in local government’s 14.6 million-person workforce. Cities, schools, water authorities and other local legal power have cut 86,000 men from payrolls during the recession—while adding 167,000 women, according to the Bureau of Labor Statistics.
    Equality in workforce numbers reflects a long-term cultural change, says Maureen Honey, author of Creating Rosie the Riveter, a book about the government’s campaign to persuade women to work outside the home during World War II. "The image that the man has to be the breadwinner has changed," Honey says.
During World War II, the women workforce _____.
选项 A、increased sharply
B、decreased suddenly
C、took over the male-dominated professions
D、brought about record-high employment rate
答案A
解析 第5段第2句开头的this time，the boost(此次增长)在时间上是承接二战来讲的，增长也是承接二战期间的增长而言的，由此可反推，本句中的bump是“上升”的意思，即二战期间女性的就业率是上升的，故选A。
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