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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

admin2012-05-17  128
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.
    "It was a long historical slog (沉重缓慢的前进) 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 epochal (划时代的) events such as the Depression and World War II. This time, the boost came from a severe recession that has been brutal (无情的) 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.
    "Unemployment among men isn’t going to last forever," says University of Chicago economist Casey Mulligan. "People will move from construction and manufacturing to industries that are creating new jobs." Mulligan expects the portion of jobs held by women to peak slightly above 50% this year, then drop below half when the economy recovers and more men find work.  
According to the passage, one aim of the federal stimulus funding is to______.
选项 A、promote health care and education
B、create new jobs for laid-off men
C、reduce the unemployment rate
D、encourage women to work outside the home
答案A
解析 根据题干中的federal stimulus funding将本题出处定位到第七段末句。该句提到，联邦经济刺激计划的资金注入教育、医疗保健以及州和地方政府。根据该基金投资的方向可推断出，联邦经济刺激计划的资金的目的是为了推动教育、医疗保健等方面的发展，故答案为[A]。[B]、[C]、[D]三项在文中均未提及，故排除。
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