[REBORN FROM THE ASHES][comments][01.15]

plukaUID: 2721764

COMMENT
The day before I read a LSAT reading concerning the women status in work places. There are two reasons for the phenomena of sexual discrimination in professional life: one is the discrimination from employers who are unwilling to offer opportunity for women applicant and better treatment for women employees, another is the seemingly discretionary choice of women based on the demand of motherhood. While the former is rightly condemned as unfair, the latter is always labeled as women’s self-decision out of free choices. The author of that material, however, told that the ostensible free will depended on the deliberately downplayed yet still persistent and
widespread social convention that women are home creatures who find the most preferable place in house works. This convention comprises the underlying constraint that confines the world of women.


Even though today’s society becomes more and more open and tolerant for career women, those who want to climb up to the pinnacle of their career are charged for a high price of possible collapse in family. Other than frequently mentioned reasons such as sexism or psychological imbalance, the thinking pattern developed during the competitive and pressing professional life serves as a cause for the unhappy family life. Plunging themselves into the rapids of modern life where the efficiency and results are highlightened, career women may unconsciously lose their softness and compromise dealing with family conflicts.

错别字：
Imbalance（ba非ban！）

jinziqiUID: 2387034

menial 仆人的
sexism 性别歧视
modicum 少量
invasion 入侵
intervention 介入

Demand for female brains is helping to alleviate some of these problems.

Nowadays, there are a lot of superwomen who are successful in her career and holding a family. The number is growing and will surpass the man because there will be 2.6m more female than male university students in America. However, it is difficult to balance career and a family for women. Sometimes, the majority cannot get the both. Actually, in the real working environment, women often can't get the deserved esteem. The highest position and the significant work often belong to the man for no reason why women can't do. Also, there is discrimination on women who may be pregnant. They will have rest at home at least 2 months with salary paid which may be a small lose for a company.

jilinlinUID: 2396929

Comment: 01.15
Women’s status have been raised dramatically during the recent decades. Women are given more control over their own lives and able to participate in the labor force. Some women even run their own companies which in the past was unimaginable and implausible. However, just like what the author said in the article, unsatisfactory problems still exist about women’s economic empowerment. Due to women’s physical function, they have to make a choice between a promising job and a good mother. Motherhood distract women’s energy, and consequentially, they will earn significantly less than those childless ones. Certain improvements such as growing flexibility of the workplace, provided plenty of state-financed nurseries and so forth have been carried out because of the demands for female brains. Many a country looks for a better way to alleviate the difficulty of motherhood in order for the human resourses of the talented mother. With the efforts to address the issue, I believe females will contribute more to our society in the future.

splendidsunUID: 2723757

1-15
Comment:
This article makes a brief summary about the progress the women have made for the past decades. Women have becoming the majority of the workforce and universities graduates in America. However, women are still under-represented in the stage of leaders. And sexism is still existed more or less. Despite the pressure from work, women have to face the problems from their families. Rearing children seems to be the responsibilities of women. It is not an easy case for them to make a balance between work and family. And rearing childern is not only time-consuming but also money consuming. If a woman divorces with her husband, there is no doubt that a child is a huge spiritual and economic burden for her.
For the government, it is difficult to change the roles that women play. But it is possible to give them abundant welfare and insurance for women to have a high quality of life, which also benefit for the whole society.


错字：
Arical—article
Progass— progress
Insourance- insurance

Words:
PepsiCo 百事可乐公司
Areva阿海珐公司（法）
empowerment 授权
menial仆人
sexism性别歧视
modicum一点点
friction摩擦力
under-represented 不足的
child-rearing抚养子女
momentum动力，冲劲
hand-to-mouth无隔夜粮的，勉强维持的
quota定额
summon up振作，唤起
march into 长驱直入

domudomuUID: 2670967

The rich world’s quiet revolution: women are gradually taking over the workplace

Getty ImagesAT A time when the world is short of causes for celebration, here is a candidate: within the next few months women will cross the 50% threshold（开端，界限） and become the majority of the American workforce. Women already make up the majority of university graduates in the OECD（经济合作与发展组织） countries and the majority of professional workers in several rich countries, including the United States. Women run many of the world’s great companies, from PepsiCo in America to Areva in France.

Women’s economic empowerment is arguably（可论证的) the biggest social change of our times. Just a generation ago, women were largely confined to repetitive, menial(卑贱不体面的） jobs. They were routinely subjected to casual sexism（男性至上） and were expected to abandon their careers when they married and had children. Today they are running some of the organisations that once treated them as second-class citizens. Millions of women have been given more control over their own lives. And millions of brains have been put to more productive use. Societies that try to resist this trend—most notably the Arab countries, but also Japan and some southern European countries—will pay a heavy price in the form of wasted talent and frustrated citizens.


This revolution has been achieved with only a modicum（少量，一点点） of friction (see article). Men have, by and large, welcomed women’s invasion of the workplace. Yet even the most positive changes can be incomplete or unsatisfactory. This particular advance comes with two stings. The first is that women are still under-represented at the top of companies. Only 2% of the bosses of America’s largest companies and 5% of their peers in Britain are women. They are also paid significantly less than men on average. The second is that juggling （颠倒，欺骗，杂耍）work and child-rearing is difficult. Middle-class couples routinely complain that they have too little time for their children. But the biggest losers are poor children—particularly in places like America and Britain that have combined high levels of female participation in the labour force with a reluctance to spend public money on child care.

Dealing with the juggle（颠倒）
These two problems are closely related. Many women feel they have to choose between their children and their careers. Women who prosper in high-pressure companies during their 20s drop out in dramatic numbers in their 30s and then find it almost impossible to regain their earlier momentum（动力，冲力）. Less-skilled women are trapped in poorly paid jobs with hand-to-mouth（仅能糊口的） child-care arrangements. Motherhood, not sexism, is the issue: in America, childless women earn almost as much as men, but mothers earn significantly less. And those mothers’ relative poverty also disadvantages their children.

Demand for female brains is helping to alleviate some of these problems. Even if some of the new theories about warm-hearted women making inherently（天性的，固有的） superior workers are bunk（废话，空话） (see article), several trends favour the more educated sex, including the “war for talent” and the growing flexibility of the workplace. Law firms, consultancies and banks are rethinking their “up or out” promotion systems because they are losing so many able women. More than 90% of companies in Germany and Sweden allow flexible working. And new technology is making it easier to redesign work in all sorts of family-friendly ways.

Women have certainly performed better over the past decade than men. In the European Union women have filled 6m of the 8m new jobs created since 2000. In America three out of four people thrown out of work since the “mancession” began have been male. And the shift towards women is likely to continue: by 2011 there will be 2.6m more female than male university students in America.

The light hand of the state
All this argues, mostly, for letting the market do the work. That has not stopped calls for hefty（大而重的） state intervention of the Scandinavian欧诸国的;斯堪的纳维亚的(主要指丹麦、挪威、瑞典、芬兰和冰岛)
sort. Norway has used threats of quotas to dramatic effect. Some 40% of the legislators there are women. All the Scandinavian countries provide plenty of state-financed nurseries. They have the highest levels of female employment in the world and far fewer of the social problems that plague Britain and America. Surely, comes the argument, there is a way to speed up the revolution—and improve the tough lives of many working women and their children?

If that means massive intervention, in the shape of affirmative-action（肯定行动） programmes and across-the-board benefits for parents of all sorts, the answer is no. To begin with, promoting people on the basis of their sex is illiberal and unfair, and stigmatises its beneficiaries. And there are practical problems. Lengthy periods of paid maternity leave（产假） can put firms off hiring women, which helps explain why most Swedish women work in the public sector and Sweden has a lower proportion of women in management than America does.

But there are plenty of cheaper, subtler ways in which governments can make life easier for women. Welfare states were designed when most women stayed at home. They need to change the way they operate. German schools, for instance, close at midday. American schools shut down for two months in the summer. These things can be changed without huge cost. Some popular American charter schools now offer longer school days and shorter summer holidays. And, without going to Scandinavian lengths, America could invest more in its children: it spends a lower share of its GDP on public child-care than almost any other rich country, and is the only rich country that refuses to provide mothers with paid maternity leave. Barack Obama needs to measure up to his campaign rhetoric about “real family values”.

Still, these nagging（使人不得安宁） problems should not overshadow the dramatic progress that women have made in recent decades. During the second world war, when America’s menfolk were off at the front, the government had to summon up the image of Rosie the Riveter, with her flexed muscle and “We Can Do It” slogan, to encourage women into the workforce. Today women are marching into the workplace in ever larger numbers and taking a sledgehammer（小题大做） to the remaining glass ceilings.


comments
Sexual descrimination has always been the hot issue in every period of the long history. However, the article reports that women are gradually taking over the workplace is a happy phenomenon to me. Actually I am a feminist in some extend, so in my mind women can be as strong as men. In my school, women always make the majority in my class and school. So , clearly, women's ability and status is graduately improving now.
Some people say mum is the gratest career in this world, thus let women in a warm and trouble situation. Women have to play a good mother role with the love from her deep heart as well as make their own dream come true. Many women may also want to make good in their jobs, but when it come to the contradiction of family and job they will hesitate and make a hard choice.
The best way to solve this is to make men share resposibility in family for women.And, a happy family will make women feel confidence then it will be helpful in jobs too.