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  3. Europeans and Americans alike have certain romantic notions about Sweden. We imagine it as a land of liberal-minded people livin

Europeans and Americans alike have certain romantic notions about Sweden. We imagine it as a land of liberal-minded people livin

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问题     Europeans and Americans alike have certain romantic notions about Sweden. We imagine it as a land of liberal-minded people living in a bastion of equality—which, in many ways, it is. Sweden has the second highest number of female parliamentarians ’in the world. Half its government ministers are women. Its wage gap is narrow, and females are well represented in the labor force. Both the United Nations and the World Economic Forum have rated it tops in the world for equality.
    But no paradise is without its paradoxes. In Sweden, the biggest one is this: while the government has done much to improve the lives of women, it has also created a glass ceiling for them that is thicker than that in many other European countries, as well as in the United States. While state funded child care and extremely long and cushy maternity benefits make it easy to be a working mother in Sweden, such benefits also have the effect of dampening female employment in the most lucrative and powerful jobs. In Sweden, more than 50 percent of women who work do so in the public sector—most as teachers, nurses, civil servants, home health aides or child minders, according to the OECD. Compare this to about 30 percent in the U.K. and 19.5 percent in America. "Private-sector employers are less willing to deal with the disruption caused by very long maternity leaves," says Manuela Tomei, a labor sociologist with the International Labor Organization in Geneva. "Gender discrimination in Sweden may be more subtle, but it is very much there."
    The link between family-friendly policies and female employment are a hot topic all over the developed world, as birthrates fall and a shortage of skilled labor looms. Europeans have looked to the Nordic countries as a model—longer maternity leaves and state-funded child care must make it easier for women to have careers, or so the conventional wisdom goes. And indeed the system does make it easier for women to hold lower-to-mid level jobs and have children. But as London School of Economics fellow Catherine Hakim notes, policies that raise the birthrate "don’t necessarily translate into complete gender equality, particularly in the private sector".
    Swedish women are unlikely to hold important managerial positions. A study by former ILO economist Richard Anker using data from 2000 found that while women in the United States held 45.3 percent of managerial positions, their Swedish counter-parts held only 29.2 percent (Britons held 33 percent, Germans 27 percent and Danes 23 percent). And, while the average wage gap between the genders in Sweden is narrow (about 15 percent), it can exceed 40 percent in high-end jobs. And while the gap is closing in other countries, it has held steady in Sweden for most of the last decade.
选项 A、Sweden is a land of equality.
B、Sweden ranks top in equality.
C、Europeans and Americans have problems in sexism.
D、Sweden has the largest number of women parliamentarians.
答案B
解析 篇章结构题。根据题干中的Sweden和women定位至首段，该段中间三句中都提到了female，这与women意思相同：瑞典女议员的数量居全球第二。半数政府部门的部长为女性。男女之间的工资差异小。最后总结：联合国和世界经济论坛都认为瑞典在平等方面位居前列。可以看出有关女性细节内容的描述能够支持末句内容。此外，第二句中也提到：我们认为瑞典是一个思想自由，处处体现平等的国家，这与末句内容前后呼应，都是中间论据部分支持的观点，故答案选项为答案。第二段第二句提到other European countries，as well as in the United States，但这与首段细节相距太远，没有支持和被支持关系。
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