RC:BF and SF

[MridulG275]

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.

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

Hi Ron,

i couldn't select option A as the answer choice because it talks only about the agreement between the two forms which only comes in the second paragraph.i though it was partial scope.

However, i chose E because in the the first paragraph author makes use of the phrase so called so i thought the author was a bit critical but i still feel that the author is pretty neutral overall with the passage.Is E wrong merely because of word critical?

Also , i don't get why A is completely right.

[RonPurewal]

i couldn't select option A...i though it was partial scope.

ironically, the correct answer to this problem MUST have what you are calling "partial scope". if it didn't, it wouldn't correctly answer the question that's actually there.

the question asks for what the passage is PRIMARILY concerned with.
you know what the word PRIMARY means, right?
...think about what that word means!
for something to be "primary", there must be SOMETHING ELSE that is "secondary".

in other words—
if a question asks for the PRIMARY, PRINCIPAL, MAIN, etc. idea of a passage, then the correct answer MUST LEAVE OUT something LESS important.

note that this is NOT anything "special" that you have to memorize for this exam! this is just the normal meaning of the word "primary". (if you saw a talk in real life, and a friend asked you "What did the person MAINLY talk about?", you wouldn't list EVERYTHING the speaker talked about!)

[RonPurewal]

... and E is incorrect because the author never actually criticizes any historians.