GMATPrep RC

[MeghaV113]

Historians have identified two dominant currents in the Russian women's movement of the late tsarist period. "Bourgeois" feminism, so called by its more radical opponents, emphasized "individualist" feminist goals such as access to education, career opportunities, and legal equality. "Socialist" feminists, by contrast, emphasized class, rather than gender, as the principal source of women's inequality and oppression, and socialist revolution, not legal reform, as the only road to emancipation and equality.

However, despite antagonism between bourgeois feminists and socialist feminists, the two movements shared certain underlying beliefs. Both regarded paid labor as the principal means by which women might attain emancipation: participation in the workplace and economic self-sufficiency, they believed, would make women socially useful and therefore deserving of equality with men. Both groups also recognized the enormous difficulties women faced when they combined paid labor with motherhood. In fact, at the First All-Russian Women's Congress in 1908, most participants advocated maternity insurance and paid maternity leave, although the intense hostility between some socialists and bourgeois feminists at the Congress made it difficult for them to recognize these areas of agreement Finally, socialist feminists and most bourgeois feminists concurred in subordinating women's emancipation to what they considered the more important goal of liberating the entire Russian population from political oppression, economic backwardness, and social injustice.

1. The passage is primarily concerned with
A. identifying points of agreement between two groups
B. advocating one approach to social reform over another
C. contrasting two approaches to solving a political problem
D. arguing that the views espoused by one political group were more radical than those espoused by another group
E. criticizing historians for overlooking similarities between the views espoused by two superficially dissimilar groups

Hello Experts,
This question is from GMAT Prep , correct answer to which seems to be A(as discussed by most of the test takers) .I have not seen the question on GMATPrep yet so can not comment for sure.However I believe that the answer to this question should be C(something that is discussed in the introductory para) and not A(which is discussed in para 2).Though none of these capture the main point perfectly,I read it in Manhattan RC Book that in such scenarios , preference should be given to the opening para.
Please share your thoughts on the same as this is a very crucial decision.

[RonPurewal]

Thing taking up more space >>> thing taking up less space.

This is what your normal common sense would decide, in any non-classroom situation. As usual, your normal common sense is correct.

[RonPurewal]

Also, in shorter passages, the more important stuff is very often found at the end, with the whole passage as a sort of "progression" toward that end.
Shorter passages almost never have an "introductory paragraph"; that's a feature of longer passages.