Q27

[khaleesiwantstodolaw]

Is E wrong because the new scholarship never discusses the way women's status "declined in the ninteenth century" but rather that "the era of revolution...brought other changes to women's lives?" (lines 66-68)

Also, I can't find support for B in the 3rd paragraph. Is this an implicit assumption which can be made after reading the third paragraph?

[mking0340]

Answer choice (E) requires us to infer a bit more than is actually supported by the passage. True, the passage does state that" the new scholarship more accurately reflects colonial women's experience" but it stops short of explaining how their status declined. Therefore, you can eliminate it for being unsupported by the text.

The support for answer choice (B) comes in lines 41-48. The opening of the third paragraph is a debunking Dexter's theory. These lines tells us that her theory is based solely on one function (their economic function in society) and assumes the social system automatically brings higher status to women. This is rephrased to give answer choice (B).

Hope this helps!

[mcgruffdd]

I see why answer B is correct, but I had a difficult time eliminating D. Can someone please explain why D is wrong?

[ohthatpatrick]

Let me put up a complete explanation.

ID the Question type:
Ugh. It's a Point of View (POV) question. We need to find the buzz phrases for "practitioners of the new scholarship" and buzz phrases for "Dexter's argument".

It's also a Infer/Imply/Suggests/Most Likely to Agree question. The correct answer will be a tricky paraphrase of something from the text. The trap answers will usually have at least one of these:
- Extreme words
- Out of scope ideas
- Unsupported Comparisons

Find the Relevant Text:
What do we know about "Dexter's argument"?
- oh, right, Golden Age

What do "practitioners of the new scholarship" have to say about Golden Age
- Golden Age was oversimplification
- simple social doesn't necessarily mean better status for women
- reality was way more complicated, with lots of different stuff affecting women's lives

Check Out the Answers
Let's look for what's weird, extreme, comparative, debatable in each answer.

(A) "primarily" is extreme. red flag. probably not.

(B) "necessarily" is extreme. red flag. But "simple social system = better status for women" matches one of our buzz phrases. maybe.

(C) "inadequate research" feels out of scope. It doesn't match any of our three buzz phrases.

(D) "definitions of gender roles" ... same as (C). It doesn't match any of our three buzz phrases.
(If you look at where 'definition of gender roles' was mentioned, you see it was part of our third buzz phrase. It was one of the many different factors that affected women's lives. New scholars would say that Dexter put too LITTLE emphasis on how these definitions affected women. So this is actually an opposite answer)

(E) "accurately"? Opposite. The practitioners would debunk Golden Age.

Okay, it looks like (B) might be it. Can we justify the word "necessarily"?

Let's check the text:
line 46-48
"assumed .. a simple social system automatically brought higher standing"

Sweet! We DO have language strong enough. We can prove (B).

Hope this helps.

[olaizola.mariana]

I still think (D) is a valid answer. The author just says that practitioners of the new scholarship have a more holistic approach -- which considers not just definitions of gender roles but other factors too (lines 50-52) -- compared to Dexter's approach which "based its assessment of colonial women's status solely on one factor," viz. it placed too much emphasis on the effect that "conditions of rough equality with their male counterparts," i.e. a new definition of gender roles, (lines 22-23) had on their status.

By contrast, I think (B) assigns an opinion to Dexter that is too strong, by using the word "necessarily." Just because Dexter focused on one factor doesn't mean that factor was necessary (as opposed to sufficient) for women's enjoyment of higher status.

[ohthatpatrick]

I see what you're trying to do with (D), but it is contradicted by the passage.

Line 48-53 says
"the new scholarship presents a picture in which definitions of gender roles (and other stuff) contributed to defining the circumstances of colonial women's lives."

Why would these new scholars say (D)?
"too much emphasis on the way definitions of gender roles affected female colonists"

They would only be mad about overemphasizing the effect of gender role definitions if Dexter had said "Gender roles definitions were the ONLY thing affecting women!"

As you said, Dexter is actually concerned more with the economic function of women.

He thinks the Colonial times were a golden age for women precisely because typical gender roles were cast aside, allowing women to transcend those normal gender roles. Line 12, "Rigid sex-role distinctions could not exist under such circumstances".

How could Dexter place too much emphasis on how gender role definitions affected women if he thinks that rigid gender role definitions did not exist during that time?

--------------

And in terms of (B), compare it to the provided line reference and try to symbolize each claim conditionally.

(B) 'less complex social system necessarily confers higher status on women'
Less complex SS --> Higher status for women

line 46-48
'a relatively simple social system automatically brought higher standing to colonial women'
Less complex SS --> Higher status for women

Hope this helps.

[olaizola.mariana]

Yes, thank you so much.