Historians, particularly those investigating the history of women, now seriously question this assumption of transforming power. They conclude that such dramatic technological innovations as the spinning jenny, the sewing machine, the typewriter, and the vacuum cleaner have not resulted in equally dramatic social changes in womens economic position or in the prevailing evaluation of womens work. The employment of young women in textile mills during the Industrial Revolution was largely an extension of an older pattern of employment of young, single women as domestics. It was not the change in office technology, but rather the separation of secretarial work, previously seen as an apprenticeship for beginning managers, from administrative work that in the 1880s created a new class of dead-end jobs, thenceforth considered womens work. The increase in the numbers of married women emp- loyed outside the home in the twentieth century had less to do with the mechanization of housework and an increase in leisure time for these women than it did with their own economic necessity and with high marriage rates that shrank the available pool of single women workers, previously, in many cases, the only women employers would hire.
Womens work has changed considerably in the past 200 years, moving from the household to the office or the factory, and later becoming mostly white-collar instead of blue-collar work. Fundamentally, however, the conditions under which women work have changed little since before the Industrial Revolution: the segregation of occupations by gender, lower pay for women as a group, jobs that require relatively low levels of skill and offer women little opportunity for advancement all persist, while womens household labor remains demanding. Recent historical investigation has led to a major revision of the notion that technology is always inherently revolutionary in its effects on society. Mechanization may even have slowed any change in the traditional position of women both in the labor market and in the home.
Which of the following statements best summarizes the main idea of the passage¡
The effects of the mechanization of womens work have not borne out the frequently held assumption that new technology is inherently revolutionary.
Recent studies have shown that mechanization revolutionizes a societys traditional values and the customary roles of its members.
Mechanization has caused the nature of womens work to change since the Industrial Revolution.
The mechanization of work creates whole new classes of jobs that did not previously exist.
The mechanization of womens work, while extremely revolutionary it its effects, has not, on the whole, had the deleterious effects that some critics had feared.
答案：(A)
史学家们往往假设，劳动的机构化不仅仅对那些操作新机器的人们的生活，而且也对机器所被引入其中的社会，均产生了种革命性的影响。例如，有人曾提出，妇女受雇于工业，这将对她们带出了家庭――她们的传统活动范围，并从根本上改变了她们在社会中的地位。在十九世纪，当妇女开始进入工厂时，朱尔?西蒙（Jules Simon）这位法国政治家就曾警告过，妇女一旦这样做，终将失去其女性特色。然而，弗里德里希?恩格斯（Friederich Engels）则预言，通过技术发展，妇女将从家庭内的“社会、法律和经济从属地位中”被解放出来；正是技术的发展使得征召“整个女性阶层……进入到公共产业中去”成为了可能。因此，关于机械化后果的社会可取性，观察家们众说纷纭，莫衷一是，但在有一点上他们不谋而合，即机械化进程必将改变妇女的生活。
史学家们，尤其是那些研究妇女历史的史学家们，现在对关于机械化进程的变革作用这一假设表示严重的怀疑。他们得出结论认为，诸如纺织机、缝纫机、打字机、以及真空吸尘器之类富于戏剧性的技术革新既没有在妇女的经济地位这方面，也没有在对妇女工作的普遍评价这方面导致同样富于戏剧性的社会变革。工业革命期间，年轻妇女受雇于纺织厂，这在很大程度上是雇佣年轻、单身女性作为女仆这样一种较为古老的模式的延伸。十九世纪八十年代，产生了新的一类“没前途”的职业，这并不是因为办公室技术发生了改变，而是由于秘书工作――在此之前被视作是初起步的经理们的一种习见训练――与行政工作的分离。自此以后，这类“没前途”的职业便被视作是“女人的工作。”二十世纪已婚妇女在家庭以外就业的人数不断增加，这与家务的机械化及这些妇女闲暇时间的增加并无多大联系，更多地是与妇女自身的经济需要和高婚姻率相关。高婚姻率致使所能雇佣的单身女工的总量缩减，而在此之前的许多情形中，单身女性则是雇主们所愿雇佣的唯一―一类妇女。
在过去的二百年中，妇女的工作有了相当程度上的变化，从家庭转向办公室或工厂，并在后来绝大部分变作白领而非蓝领工作。然而，从根本上来说，妇女的工作条件自从工业革命之前的那个时代以来都几乎没有任何变化：由性别因素而造成的职业隔阂，妇女作为一个整体相对较低的报酬，以及那些仅要求相对低级技能并很少为妇女提供晋升机会的工作，凡此种种依然存在；而与此同时，妇女的家务劳动仍强度很高。近期的史学研究已导致史学家们对技术永远会对社会产生其固有的革命性影响这一观察作出重大修正。机械化进程甚至有可能阻遏了妇女无论是在劳动力市场还是在家庭内部传统地位的任何改变。
The author mentions all of the following inventions as examples of dramatic technological innovations EXCEPT the
sewing machine
vacuum cleaner
typewriter
telephone
spinning jenny
答案：(D)
It can be inferred from the passage that, before the Industrial Revolution, the majority of womens work was done in which of the following settings¡
Textile mills
Private households
Offices
Factories
Small shops
答案：(B)
