Since 1975 the number of women in upper-level management in American c

Since 1975 the number of women in upper-level management in American corporations have increased by 25 percent; female executives’ salaries, however, still lag behind those of their male counterparts.

(A) have increased by 25 percent; female executives’ salaries, however, still lag the number should use "has" - SV Agreement Error
(B) has increased by 25 percent, however much their salaries lag much should be used with uncountable nouns and their is ambiguous
(C) have increased 25 percent; female executives’ salaries, however, still have lagged the number should use "has" - SV Agreement Error
(D) has increased by 25 percent; female executives’ salaries, however, still lag Correct
(E) have increased 25 percent; their salaries, however, still lag the number should use "has" - SV Agreement Error

E is also wrong because it has a semicolon and besides this we have placed a dependent clause marker - their . We should have used comma fanboys instead.

Am I right with this ?

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Since 1975 the number of women in upper-level management in American corporations have increased by 25 percent; female executives’ salaries, however, still lag behind those of their male counterparts.

(A) have increased by 25 percent; female executives’ salaries, however, still lag: when "the number" is used verb should be singular "has must be used" - Subject Verb Agreement Error
(B) has increased by 25 percent, however much their salaries lag: The sentence seems ambiguous when compared to the eventual answer "D"
(C) have increased 25 percent; female executives’ salaries, however, still have lagged Same error as A
(D) has increased by 25 percent; female executives’ salaries, however, still lag "Correct"
(E) have increased 25 percent; their salaries, however, still lag the number should use "has" - Same error as A

Bunuel , GMATNinja
Thanks for the post.
I agree with the OA as it is the best answer out of the lot, but want to clarify one thing.

In the below highlighted part of the sentence -


'their' should correspond to female executives as it is the only logical antecedent.
But the problem is that female executives is not a noun in the underlined portion right now (female executives’) and cannot be the antecedent. Hence 'their' grammatically is pointing to the nearest noun 'American Corporations', making the meaning absurd.

Would you agree if the sentence would be of the below form -

Since 1975 the number of women in upper-level management in American corporations have increased by 25 percent; salaries of female executives, however, still lag behind those of their male counterparts.

According to me, it would have been both parallel and logical in meaning.

Please help in clarifying on this.

Can any kind soul address this ?

First of all, you would need to use "HAS increased", not "have increased", since we need a singular verb to agree with the singular subject ("number").

Also, "their" is a possessive pronoun, so it can absolutely refer to the possessive, female executives', as is the case in the correct answer choice (D).

As discussed in this post, a possessive pronoun can also refer to a subject noun (i.e. "The fans want their money back." or "The female executives all met their sales quotas.").


"Their salaries, however, still lag behind those of their male counterparts" is an independent clause! Here, have another example:

"Malik went to the concert. He thought it was terrible."

Sure, the second sentence doesn't make any sense without the first sentence, but that doesn't mean it's a dependent clause. It is a complete thought with a subject and a verb and can stand alone -- it does not need to be incorporated into the first sentence.

So the semicolon in (E) is perfectly fine. The problem is that we need a singular verb to agree with the singular subject (number).

I hope this helps!