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  3. In current historiography, the picture of a consistent, unequivocal decline in women’s status with the advent of capitalism and

In current historiography, the picture of a consistent, unequivocal decline in women’s status with the advent of capitalism and

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问题 In current historiography, the picture of a consistent, unequivocal decline in women’s status with the advent of capitalism and industrialization is giving way to an analysis that not only emphasizes both change (whether improvement or decline) and continuity but also accounts for geographical and occupational variation. The history of women’s work in English farmhouse cheese making between 1800 and 1930 is a case in point. In her influential Women Workers and the Industrial Revolution (1930), Pinchbeck argued that the agricultural revolution of the eighteenth and early nineteenth centuries, with its attendant specialization and enlarged scale of operation, curtailed women’s participation in the business of cheese production. Earlier, she maintained, women had concerned themselves with feeding cows, rearing calves, and even selling the cheese in local markets and fairs. Pinchbeck thought that the advent of specialization meant that women’s work in cheese dairying was reduced simply to processing the milk. "Dairymen" (a new social category) raised and fed cows and sold the cheese through factors, who were also men. With this narrowing of the scope of work, Pinchbeck believed, women lost business ability, independence, and initiative.
Though Pinchbeck portrayed precapitalist, preindustrial conditions as superior to what followed, recent scholarship has seriously questioned the notion of a golden age for women in precapitalist society. For example, scholars note that women’s control seldom extended to the disposal of the proceeds of their work. In the case of cheese, the rise of factors may have compromised women’s ability to market cheese at fairs. But merely selling the cheese did not necessarily imply access to the money: Davidoff cites the case of an Essex man who appropriated all but a fraction of the money from his wife’s cheese sales.
By focusing on somewhat peripheral operations, moreover, Pinchbeck missed a substantial element of continuity in women’s participation: throughout the period women did the central work of actually making cheese. Their persistence in English cheese dairying contrasts with women’s early disappearance from arable agriculture in southeast England and from American cheese dairying. Comparing these three divergent developments yields some reasons for the differences among them. English cheese-making women worked in a setting in which cultural values, agricultural conditions, and the nature of their work combined to support their continued participation. In the other cases, one or more of these elements was lacking.
It can be inferred from the passage that women did work in
选项 A、American cheesemaking at some point prior to industrialization
B、arable agriculture in northern England both before and after the agricultural revolution
C、arable agriculture in southeast England after the agricultural revolution, in those locales in which cultural values supported their participation
D、the sale of cheese at local markets in England even after the agricultural revolution
E、some areas of American cheese dairying after industrialization
答案A
解析 Inference
This question focuses mainly on the final paragraph of the passage, in which women’s continued work in English cheese dairying is contrasted with what the passage calls their disappearance from arable agriculture in southeast England and from American cheese dairying, presumably during the period of industrialization. The correct answer will be a conclusion that can be drawn from this information.
A Correct. That women "disappeared" from American cheese dairying during industrialization provides grounds for inferring that they did such dairying work at some point prior to industrialization.
B The passage says that women disappeared from arable agriculture in southeast England, but it gives no information about their participation in arable agriculture in northern England.
C The passage makes a blanket statement about women’s disappearance from arable agriculture in southeast England, so there is no reason to infer that any locales supported women’s participation in agriculture.
D The first paragraph states that factors, who were men, sold cheese after the agricultural revolution.
E The final paragraph explicitly states that women disappeared from American cheese dairying; thus, there is no basis for inferring that women worked in any areas of that field after industrialization.
The correct answer is A.
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