单选题 In a perfectly free and open market economy, the type of employer—government or private—school have little or no impact on the earnings differentials between women and men. However, if there is discrimination against one sex, it is unlikely that the degree of discrimination by government and private employers will be the same. Differences in the degree of discrimination would result in earnings differentials associated with the type of employer. Given the nature of government and private employers, it seems most likely that discrimination by private employers would be greater. Thus, one would expect that, if women are being discriminated against, government employment would have a positive effect on women"s earnings as compared with their earnings from private employment. The results of a study by Fuchs support this assumption. Fuchs" results suggest that the earnings of women in an industry composed entirely of government employers would be 14.6 percent employers, other things being equal.
In addition, both Fuchs and Sanborn have suggested that the effect of discrimination by consumers on the earnings of self-employed women may be greater than the effect of either government or private employer discrimination on the earnings of women employees. To test this hypothesis, Brown selected a large sample of White male and female workers from the 1970 Census and divided them into three categories: private employees, government employees, and self-employed. (Black workers were excluded from the sample to avoid picking up earning differentials that were the result of racial disparities. ) Brown"s research design controlled for education, labor force participation, mobility, motivations, and age in order to eliminate these factors as explanations of the study"s results. Brown"s results suggest that men and women are not treated the same by employers and consumers. For men, self-employment is the highest earnings category, with private employment next, and government lowest. For women, this order is
reversed.
One can infer from Brown"s results that consumer discriminate against self-employed women. In addition, self-employed women may have more difficulty than men in getting good employees and may encounter discrimination from suppliers and from financial institutions.
Brown"s results are clearly consistent with Fuchs" argument that discrimination by consumers has a greater impact on the earnings of women than does discrimination by either government or private employers. Also, the fact that women do better working for government than for private employers implies that private employers are discriminating against women. The results do not prove, that government does not discriminate against women. They do, however, demonstrate that if government is discriminating against women, its discrimination is not having as much effect on women"s earnings as is discrimination in the private sector.
单选题 The passage mentions all of the following as difficulties that self-employed women may encounter except ______.
【正确答案】 D
【答案解析】[解析] 细节判断题。根据题干关键词difficulties，self-employed women定位到原文第三段。第三段首句中的consumer discriminate与选项B对应；第三段尾句中的more difficulty than men in getting good employees与选项C对应，第三段尾句中的discrimination from suppliers与选项A对应，只有选项D没有提及。故答案为D。
单选题 A study of the practices of financial institutions that revealed no discrimination against self- employed women would tend to contradict which of the following?
【正确答案】 C
【答案解析】[解析] 细节推断题。原文只在第三段中提到金融机构而且是以“One can infer from...”来引出的段落，这就表明该段落中所提到的情况在上文中并没有直接说明。本段都是作者进行的推测，作者对于妇女会受到投资机构的歧视的推断与题目中的观点相矛盾。故答案为C。
单选题 According to Brown"s study, women"s earnings categories occur in which of the following orders, from highest earnings to lowest earnings?
【正确答案】 A
【答案解析】[解析] 细节推理题。根据题干中的关键词Brown"s study，women"s earnings categories，orders定位到原文第二段最后三句。这三句写道：“布朗的研究成果表明，雇主与消费者对待男子与女子的态度不同。对男子而言，个体经营收入最高，私营企业工作其次，政府单位工作最低。对于女子来说，这个顺序正好倒过来。”故答案为A。
单选题 Which of the following questions does the passage explicitly answer?
【正确答案】 C
【答案解析】[解析] 细节推断题。原文第二段中间括号内部分解释了为什么不选黑人作为研究的对象，即：“(Black workers were excluded from the sample to avoid picking up earning differentials that were the result of racial disparities．)”。这里动词不定式“to avoid...disparities”表示原因(为了避免由于种族差异而出现的工资差别)。故答案为C。文中只给出A、B和D项所包含的观点，而并没有指出其原因，故而排除。
单选题 It can be inferred from the passage that the statements in the last paragraph are most probably ______.
【正确答案】 B
【答案解析】[解析] 细节推理题。原文尾段开头作者就提到，布朗的研究成果与法克的论据是明显一致的。接着说到，私人雇主歧视妇女，但这不等于说，政府雇主不歧视。可是，对比之下，私人雇主的歧视对妇女收入的影响更大。由此可见，原文尾段的内容是作者根据布朗和法克的研究成果而得出的结论。故答案为B。
单选题 Which of the following titles best describe the content of the passage as a whole?
【正确答案】 D
【答案解析】[解析] 主旨题。从全文内容来看，本文阐述了政府雇主、私人雇主和消费者对妇女收入的影响。抓住原文首段第四句为主题句以及原文尾段尾句为全文的结论句，接着扫描第二段，首句为段落主题句，扫描第三段，抓住Brown"s results关键词。最后进行综合归纳，从选项中排除片面、笼统、杜撰的干扰项，选取一个最具概括力的选项。故答案为D。