2. 外语
  3. It is easy to be cynical about government—and rarely does such cynicism go unrewarded. Take, for instance, policy towards women.

It is easy to be cynical about government—and rarely does such cynicism go unrewarded. Take, for instance, policy towards women.

admin2022-10-13  87
问题     It is easy to be cynical about government—and rarely does such cynicism go unrewarded. Take, for instance, policy towards women. Some politicians declare that they value women’s unique role, which can be shorthand for keeping married women at home looking after the kids. Others create whole ministries devoted to policies for women, which can be a device for parking women’s issues on the periphery (外围)of policy where they cannot do any harm. Still others, who may actually mean what they say, pass laws giving women equal opportunities to men. Yet decreeing an end to discrimination is very different from bringing it about.
    Amid this tangle of evasion, half-promises and wishful thinking, some policymakers have embraced a technique called gender budgeting. It not only promises to do a lot of good for women, but carries a lesson for advocates of any cause: the way to a government’s heart is through its pocket.
    At its simplest, gender budgeting sets out to quantify how policies affect women and men differently. That seemingly trivial step converts exhortation about treating women fairly into the coin of government: costs and benefits, and investments and returns.
    As well as identifying opportunities and errors, gender budgeting brings women’s issues right to the heart of government, the ministry of finance. Governments routinely bat away sensible policies that lack a champion when the money is handed out. But if judgments about what makes sense for women are being formed within the finance ministry itself, then the battle is half-won.
    Gender budgeting is not new. Feminist economists have argued for it since the 1980s. Now, it showed how, with an ageing population, the country gained from spending on care. It is found that investment in clean water not only curbed disease but also freed up girls, who used to fetch the stuff, to go to school. Ample research confirms that leaving half a country’s people behind is bad for growth. Violence against women; failing to educate girls properly; unequal pay and access to jobs: all take an economic toll.
    Inevitably there are difficulties. Dividing a policy’s costs and benefits between men and women can be hard. Sometimes, as with lost hours of school, the costs have to be estimated. Redesigning the budgeting process upends (颠倒) decades of practice. If every group pressing for change took the same approach, it would become unmanageable. In a way, though, that is the point. Governments find it easy to pay lip-service to women’s rights. Doing something demands tough choices.
How could we understand the advantage of gender budgeting?
选项 A、It finds proper means to quantify policies’ effect.
B、It brings in more investments from the government.
C、It successfully gets the government fully involved.
D、It urges governments to fulfil their financial support.
答案C
解析 由题干中的gender budgeting定位至第二段第二句和第四段首句。推理判断题。第二段开始引出性别预算这一概念，并在第二句中指出这种方式涉及政府的钱财；而第四段首句则提到性别预算能将女性问题带入政府的核心。可见女性预算与以往那些女性政策的区别，其最大优势在于能让政府充分参与，故答案为C。
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