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  3. While no woman has been President of the United States, yet the world does have several thousand years of experience with female

While no woman has been President of the United States, yet the world does have several thousand years of experience with female

admin2014-09-17  25
问题    While no woman has been President of the United States, yet the world does have several thousand years of experience with female leaders, and I have to acknowledge it: their historical record puts men’s to shame.
   A notable share of the great leaders in history have been women: Queen Hatshepsut and Cleopatra of Egypt, Empress Wu Zetian of China, Isabella of Castile, Queen Elizabeth I of England, Catherine the Great of Russia, and Maria Theresa of Austria. Granted, I’m neglecting the likes of Bloody Mary, but it’s still true that those women who climbed to power in monarchies had an astonishingly high success rate.
   Research by political psychologists points to possible explanations. Scholars find that women, compared with men, tend to excel in consensus-building and certain other skills useful in leadership. If so, why have female political leaders been so much less impressive in the democratic era? Margaret Thatcher was a transformative figure, but women have been mediocre prime ministers or presidents in countries like Sri Lanka, India, Bangladesh, Pakistan, the Philippines and Indonesia. Often, they haven’t even addressed the urgent needs of women in those countries.
   I have a pet theory about what’s going on.
   In monarchies, women who rose to the top dealt mostly with a narrow elite, so they could prove themselves and get on with governing. But in democracies in the television age, female leaders also have to navigate public prejudices—and these make democratic politics far more challenging for a woman than for a man.
   In a common experiment, the "Goldberg paradigm", people are asked to evaluate a particular article or speech, supposedly by a man. Others are asked to evaluate the identical presentation, but from a woman. Typically, in countries all over the world, the very same words are rated higher coming from a man.
   In particular, one lesson from this research is that promoting their own successes is a helpful strategy for ambitious men. But experiments have demonstrated that when women highlight their accomplishments, that’s a turn-off. And women seem even more offended by self-promoting females than men are.
   This creates a huge challenge for ambitious women in politics or business: if they’re self-effacing, people find them unimpressive, but if" they talk up their accomplishments, they come across as pushy braggarts.
   The broader conundrum is that for women, but not for men, there is a tradeoff in qualities associated with top leadership. A woman can be perceived as competent or as likable, but not both.
   "It’s an uphill struggle, to be judged both a good woman and a good leader," said Rosabeth Moss Kanter, a Harvard Business School professor who is an expert on women in leadership. Professor Kanter added that a pioneer in a man’s word, like Hillary Rodham Clinton, also faces scrutiny on many more dimensions than a man—witness the public debate about Mrs. Clinton’s allegedly "thick ankles,"or the headlines last year about cleavage.
   Clothing and appearance generally matter more for women than for men, research shows. Surprisingly, several studies have found that it’s actually a disadvantage for a woman to be physically attractive when applying for a managerial job. Beautiful applicants received lower ratings, apparently because they were subconsciously pegged as stereotypically female and therefore unsuited for a job as a boss.
   Female leaders face these impossible judgments all over the world. An M. I. T. economist, Esther Duflo, looked at India, which has required female leaders in one-third of village councils since the mid-1990s. Professor Duflo and her colleagues found that by objective standards, the women ran the villages better than men. For example, women constructed and maintained wells better, and took fewer bribes.
   Yet ordinary villagers themselves judged the women as having done a worse job, and so most women were not re-elected. That seemed to result from prejudice. Professor Duflo asked villagers to listen to a speech, identical except that it was given by a man in some cases and by a woman in others. Villagers gave the speech much lower marks when it was given by a woman.
   Such prejudices can be overridden after voters actually see female leaders in action. While the first ones received dismal evaluations, the second round of female leaders in the villages were rated the same as men. "Exposure reduces prejudice," Professor Duflo suggested.
   Women have often quipped that they have to be twice as good as men to get anywhere—but that, fortunately, is not difficult. In fact, it appears that it may be difficult after all. Modern democracies may empower deep prejudices and thus constrain female leaders in ways that ancient monarchies did not.
It can be inferred from the passage that prejudice against female leaders
选项 A、is impossible to be eliminated among the general public.
B、can be eliminated when objective standards are given.
C、can be overcome when people have knowledge of their real accomplishments.
D、is the only reason why female leaders are less impressive in democratic era.
答案C
解析 推断题。文章第十二段至第十四段主要内容是关于印度村委会女性领导者由于村民偏见受到不公正评价。第十四段指出：Such prejudices can be overTidden after voters actually seefemale leaders in action. 由此可知，当参与投票选举的村民真正看到了女性领导者的政绩时，偏见才能消除，故[C]为答案。因此，[A]指出大众对于女性领导者的偏见不可能消除，过于绝对，故排除；文章第十二、十三段援引杜弗罗教授观点时指出，以公正客观的考查标准来看，女性领导者在治理村庄方面优于男性。然而，村民们却持相反意见，认为女性领导们表现得差强人意。由此可见，即使面对客观标准，仍无法消除大众偏见，故排除[B]；纵观全文，虽然大众偏见使民主政治对女性的挑战远远高于男性，但不能因此确定这是民主时期熠熠生辉的女性政治领袖寥寥无几的唯一原因，[D]选项过于绝对，故排除。  
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