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Once American men returned from the WWII battlefields, they quickly displaced the women who had temporarily filled jobs otherwise reserved for men. With many women reverting to their domestic role, the dramatic increase in birth rate is perhaps not too surprising. Yet, such factors alone cannot explain the increase in the number of births from 1946-1951. Murray suggests that both women and men’s perspectives changed, mostly because of America’s success in the war, leading to rapid population growth. However, this position ignores the many middle- and lower-middle class women who continued working in factories and who contributed to the dramatic surge in population. Regarding this subset, the more plausible view is that couples were more likely to conceive based on the fact that they considered themselves part of a dual-income household—if necessary, the woman of the home could work.
The passage implies that the main shortcoming in Murray’s view is that it
Title
Working Women
Your Result
Correct
Difficulty
Medium
Your Pace
0:03
Others' Pace
1:26
Video Explanation
Text Explanation
Approach
Certainly, it’s an obvious point to make that reading comprehension passages require, well, close reading. But it cannot be overstated. With respect to this particular passage, the question is asking you to find a shortcoming in the argument. In other words, where does the reasoning driving the argument weaken? Like all GRE questions, the challenge is made even more so by an answer that masquerades as the right one, but is, in fact, incorrect.
*Most Commonly Missed Answer Alert*
In this case, the imposter answer we’ll call it is A) ignores the role women play in a dual-income household. Yes, the author does ignore the role of women in dual-income households; however, as stated in the passage, his “position ignores the many middle- and lower-middle class women who continued working in factories and who contributed to the dramatic surge in population.” Two socio-economic demographics have, in effect, been left out of his assessment.
C) is incorrect because nowhere does Murray evaluate what these men and women thought of their own status, ie. wealth
D) states the direct opposite of what we discussed in answer A). Murray does not overemphasize the segment of women who worked in factories, those “many middle- and lower-middle class women.” He overlooks or ignores them completely.
You can easily eliminate E) only considers women’s perspectives by re-reading through the passage and finding that “couples were more likely to conceive based on the fact that they considered themselves part of a dual-income household,” which accounts for both men and women.
By this process of elimination, we arrive at answer choice B) fails to account for a particular segment of society and this is also supported by our analysis of the other answer choices.
Takeaways
1. Read carefully for context clues that will steer you away from the answer choice masquerading as the right one.
2. Ignore the “imposter answer” by challenging yourself to highlight concrete evidence for it in the passage. If you can’t find any, you can feel confident that you’ve found the imposter answer.
Related Lessons
Watch the lessons below for more detailed explanations of the concepts tested in this question. And don't worry, you'll be able to return to this answer from the lesson page.
