Hey All,

Lots of conversation around this one, but it doesn't look like anyone's taken it apart piece by piece. Let's do that.

This is a tough question, because it is masquerading as a comparison question. I saw a lot of people mention comparison here, and there absolutely is one. However, none of them really compare the way I (and probably you) would like to see it, "Discrimination in wages paid in occupations that are predominantly male over those paid in occupations that are predominantly female..." Then we would get the comparison we want. But none of the answers do it, so comparison must not be the issue here. In reality, it's much simpler: this is a straight-forward subject-verb agreement question.

The two important splits are paid/favors, and have/has at the end.

Discrimination in wages paid in occupations that are predominantly male over the predominantly female have given rise to substantial differentials between the wage of housepainters and secretaries and between the wages of parking-lot attendants and library assistants.

(A) paid in occupations that are predominantly male over the predominantly female have
PROBLEM: The subject of "have" is "discrimination", which is singular, so we need "has". How do we know it's "discrimination", and not "wages" or "occupations"? Well, if you'd read the MGMAT Sentence Correction guide, you'd know! : ) The subject of a sentence will never be within a prepositional phrase. "in wages paid" is prepositional, as is "in occupations". This means "discrimination" is our subject, which is singular.

(B) paid in occupations that are predominantly make over those that are predominantly female have
PROBLEM: same as above.

(C) that favors predominantly male occupations over the predominantly female have
PROBLEM: Because "that" is a relative pronoun, we know that this phrase modifies "wages". This means "wages" must be the subject of "favors", so it should be "favor".

(D) that favors predominantly male occupations over those that are predominantly female has
PROBLEM: Same as above.

(E) paid in predominantly male occupations over the predominantly female has
ANSWER: Correct in all ways.

That's a rough one. Hope that helps!

-tommy
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Tommy Wallach | Manhattan GMAT Instructor | San Francisco

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Hey Nusma,

Well the sentence itself already says "predominantly male occupations", so it must be okay to imply that other occupations are predominantly female. It isn't that the word itself has a gender, it's just like saying "The boys soccer team".

-t
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Tommy Wallach | Manhattan GMAT Instructor | San Francisco

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discripency in SVA leaves D and E.
E is the best answer.
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for every person who doesn't try because he is
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keeps making mistakes and succeeds..

My vote for D as well b/c of the reasons provided above.

go to with D. Due to SVA error and "paid in" does not sound good.

D it is.
E incorrectly compares male occupations with predominantly females and not occupations with occupations.

"Discrimination in wages that favors" is wrong as it is not the Discrimination that favors. "E" is the correct answer.
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Consider kudos for good post.

Also I think the subject here is "wages" and not "discrimination", so it needs a "have" and not "has".

damn I missed connecting 'wages' to 'that favors'. If I had ruled this out, only E would be left.
Thanks Tommy.

Hey All,

So a few more questions about the notion of comparison. Perhaps I was a bit hasty to write off comparisons entirely here (though you can answer the question more directly as subject-verb agreement. Let's take a look at the comparisons.

245. Discrimination in wages paid in occupations that are predominantly male over the predominantly female have given rise to substantial differentials between the wage of housepainters and secretaries and between the wages of parking-lot attendants and library assistants.

(A) paid in occupations that are predominantly male over the predominantly female have
COMPARISON: We would want to compare "predominantly male occupations" to "the predominantly female". The fact that this sentence breaks up that first element into "occupations that are predominantly male" is pretty ugly. We would rather have two nouns, not a noun and a clause.

(B) paid in occupations that are predominantly make over those that are predominantly female have
COMPARISON: This is a nice comparison "occupations that are predominantly male", "those that are predominantly female".

(C) that favors predominantly male occupations over the predominantly female have
COMPARISON: This is okay, too. "predominantly male occupations" "the predominantly female ["occupations" understood]"

(D) that favors predominantly male occupations over those that are predominantly female has
COMPARISON: This gives us a noun and a clause again, just like A.

(E) paid in predominantly male occupations over the predominantly female has
COMPARISON: Looks good, just like C.

Hope that helps!

-tommy
_________________

Tommy Wallach | Manhattan GMAT Instructor | San Francisco

Manhattan GMAT Discount | Manhattan GMAT Reviews