Like their male counterparts

[RonPurewal]

Hi Instructors ,

I understand that this sentence can be solved on the basis of Like/Unlike that indicates parallelism.

But , when do we use the verb form
...have had.......

this form is just an instance of the present perfect tense -- it's the present perfect of the verb "have". provided the context is appropriate, it can be used in basically any circumstance where you'd use the present perfect of any other random verb.

[Jazmet]

In reference to the same construction "Unlike men of science, their female counterparts.....", Is the following construction wrong?

Unlike Chandler, his brother works hard?

If yes, please explain.

[RonPurewal]

In reference to the same construction "Unlike men of science, their female counterparts.....", Is the following construction wrong?

Unlike Chandler, his brother works hard?

If yes, please explain.

i don't think anything is wrong there.

what's problematic about "their" in the original problem is that it's supposed to refer to the men, but the subject of the previous clause (to which it looks parallel) is the women.
that issue has been removed here, because the entire first part is gone. so, this isn't really problematic anymore, at least not for any reason that will be tested on this exam.

[Jazmet]

Ron, thank you for your inputs..

although I know the correct answer and I agree with, I still have some confusion with 'A'

Like their male counterparts (paralleled with) women scientists (non-underlined part, hence we can't question) - 'Their' certainly refers to Women.

but in ---- ""but, unlike men of science, their female counterparts"" (Can this their not refer to men directly? if not, then is it because a pronoun cant refer to noun in a modifier? moreover, But (as a conjunction) introduces a new independent clause, so their female counterparts can't refer all the way back to the first clause?

Please correct me if I am wrong.

[RonPurewal]

but in ---- ""but, unlike men of science, their female counterparts"" (Can this their not refer to men directly? if not, then is it because a pronoun cant refer to noun in a modifier? moreover, But (as a conjunction) introduces a new independent clause, so their female counterparts can't refer all the way back to the first clause?

Please correct me if I am wrong.

this is basically way too much thinking.
i'm not familiar with all the principles you are espousing here. (also, many of the terms here, like "conjunction" and "independent clause", are things i don't -- and really can't -- remember.)

when it comes to pronouns, you should basically just look for two things:
* is there a NOUN that the pronoun can logically stand for (and is that noun clear in context)?
* does the pronoun match that noun, in terms of singular/plural?

these two principles are going to be good enough for 98% of all pronouns ... and almost all of the other 2% will be like these:
post49622.html#p49622

otherwise, it's best not to clutter your mind with the rest of this stuff.

[TooLong150]

is this really an official gmatprep problem? it really, really doesn't seem like one.

the only grammatically viable choice here is (e), but i don't think the gmat would juxtapose "men of science" and "women of science" like that (not to mention that the situation would be made even worse by the proximity of "women scientists" and "their male counterparts" - that's just way too much stuff for one sentence).

choice (a) suffers from pronoun ambiguity, as pointed out by the poster above. it's worse than just your garden-variety pronoun ambiguity, though; at first glance, "their female counterparts" seems to be parallel to "their male counterparts" at the beginning of the sentence - in other words, the spurious parallelism makes it look as though the female scientists have not only male counterparts, but also female counterparts.
ugh.

to the original poster, please confirm that this is an official problem; i have a hard time believing it.

Hi Ron,

In A,
How can "their female counterparts" be parallel to "their male counterparts" given that Like X Y and Unlike X Y control the parallel structure and "their female counterparts" belongs to the Y portion of the Unlike X Y parallel structure?

[RonPurewal]

I can't really follow all those x's and y's.

Make sure you're aware, though, that there are two different constructions here:

1/
Like their male counterparts, women of science are xxxxx

and...

2/
unlike men of science, women of science have had to yyyyy

These are two complete sentences, connected by "but".

[TooLong150]

Yes, I understand that those are two different structures. Let me clarify my previous post:

is this really an official gmatprep problem? it really, really doesn't seem like one.

the only grammatically viable choice here is (e), but i don't think the gmat would juxtapose "men of science" and "women of science" like that (not to mention that the situation would be made even worse by the proximity of "women scientists" and "their male counterparts" - that's just way too much stuff for one sentence).

choice (a) suffers from pronoun ambiguity, as pointed out by the poster above. it's worse than just your garden-variety pronoun ambiguity, though; at first glance, "their female counterparts" seems to be parallel to "their male counterparts" at the beginning of the sentence - in other words, the spurious parallelism makes it look as though the female scientists have not only male counterparts, but also female counterparts.
ugh.

to the original poster, please confirm that this is an official problem; i have a hard time believing it.

You stated (bolded) in the above post that in Choice A "their female counterparts" is made to look parallel to "their male counterparts" at the beginning of the sentence. However, how can "their female counterparts" be parallel to "their male counterparts" given that the only apparent parallel structures in the sentence are Like X Y and Unlike X Y as described below?
For Like X Y; X would be "their male counterparts" and Y would be "women scientists".
For Unlike X Y; X would be "men of science" and Y would be "their female counterparts".

[RonPurewal]

"at first glance..."
"seems to be parallel"
"spurious parallelism"

The point of all three of these phrasings is that these are not actually parallel structures. They just might appear that way if you are not careful.