Last year in the United States, women who ran for state and national

Question

Last year in the United States, women who ran for state and national offices were about as likely to win as men. However, only about fifteen percent of the candidates for these offices were women. Therefore, the reason there are so few women who win elections for these offices is not that women have difficulty winning elections but that so few women want to run.

Which of the following, if true, most seriously undermines the conclusion given?

(A) Last year the proportion of women incumbents who won reelection was smaller than the proportion of men incumbents who won reelection.

(B) Few women who run for state and national offices run against other women.

(C) Most women who have no strong desire to be politicians never run for state and national offices.

(D) The proportion of people holding local offices who are women is smaller than the proportion of people holding state and national offices who are women.

(E) Many more women than men who want to run for state and national offices do not because they cannot get adequate funding for their campaigns.

Technext · Accepted Answer

Last year in the United States, women who ran for state and national offices were about as likely to win as men. However, only about fifteen percent of the candidates for these offices were women. Therefore, the reason there are so few women who win elections for these offices is not that women have difficulty winning elections but that so few women want to run.

Which of the following, if true, most seriously undermines the conclusion given?

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Hi ritula,

There's nothing wrong with option E. IMHO, in fact,  everything is right  with option E.

Premise 1 : Last year in the United States, women who ran for state and national offices were about as likely to win as men.

Premise 2 : Only about fifteen percent of the candidates for these offices were women.

Conclusion : There are few women who win elections for these offices not because they have difficulty winning elections but because very few of them want to run.

What can we do to weaken the conclusion? We can attack (weaken) either of the following points:
 1 . not because they have difficulty winning elections
 2 . but because very few of them want to run

Explanation :

( A ) Last year the proportion of women incumbents who won reelection was smaller than the proportion of men incumbents who won reelection. ---> It's more like a Red-Herring. Though, we are talking about election, we are not concerned about what happens during  re -election. I have no problem accepting this option as a distraction.

Still if someone is not OK with this explanation, here's for you:  I assume the above statement to be true  but I would also like to add that  the proportion of women incumbents who won normal elections (where no reelection was held) was far greater than the proportion of men incumbents who won normal elections .  If this is true, you cannot say that the argument is undermined .

( B ) Few women who run for state and national offices run against other women. ---> I found this tricky. One woman competes against another woman but that does not affect the argument. Why?

w.r.t. Point 1 : This option does not show why they have difficulty winning elections. Whether a woman fights against a man or a woman, how does it matter? Is she facing  difficulty  in winning?  No!

w.r.t. Point 2 : This option only states that few women run for elections but it  DOES NOT  state  why only few of them are interested in contesting elections .

( C ) Most women who have no strong desire to be politicians never run for state and national offices. ---> This actually  strengthens  the conclusion by stating that many of them aren't interested in running for elections.

( D ) The proportion of people holding local offices who are women is smaller than the proportion of people holding state and national offices who are women. 
---> Irrelevant.

( E ) Many more women than men who want to run for state and national offices do not because they cannot get adequate funding for their campaigns. ---> This very clearly  attacks (weakens) point 1 . Lack of funds for campaigning can be a  major factor  for someone's defeat in an election.
-----------------------

So, my choice is option  E .

Hope that helps.

Regards,
Technext

IanStewart · Answer

The answer is definitely E.

It's important to note here that the question tells us in the stem that:  Last year in the United States, women who ran for state and national offices were about as likely to win as men.   This is a  premise  of the argument - it absolutely cannot be wrong. It's always an error to try to disprove a premise in GMAT CR, because premises are absolute facts. I gather answer A might seem appealing because it suggests that women are not actually as good as men at winning elections. But we know as an absolute fact here that women  are  just as good as men at winning elections. If answer A is true, and fewer women incumbents win, then it absolutely must be true that  more  first-time woman candidates win than men, because that's the only way it could be true that women win as often as men.

So A is not the right answer. The key is to focus on the right part of the conclusion. The conclusion says, in part:  the reason there are so few women who win elections is ... that so few women want to run . Whether women want to run for these offices is not mentioned anywhere in the stem, and there could be lots of reasons women do not run, even though they very much want to. Perhaps they lack party support, or funding, or face other obstacles that men do not face. That's why E is the best answer here.

ritula · Answer

Though I find A as the best. but i wanna know wht is wrong with E?

tusharvk · Answer

In E, the ability to secure funding is talked about. We are not talking about this ability; but just plain ability of women to win elections. Hence, incumbents ran but lost implies to me that it is not for lack of want in women but their ability to win that they lost.

tejal777 · Answer

Guys I didnt understand.

Option E is STRENTHENING the second pt.,saying YES very few women run albeit for a different reason.Please explain.

bipolarbear · Answer

You have to read more carefully. The premise states that "Many more women than men  who want to run for state and national offices  do not because they cannot get adequate funding for their campaigns". This directly attacks the argument, which states that women DO NOT want to run. This says that women MAY want to run but of those who DO, at least some CAN'T.

rkassal · Answer

E weakens the argument the most. 
It says that the women want to run but lack of funds for their campaigns keeps them from running for elections. So, it is not the will of the women that is responsible for their lower numbers, as the stimulus suggests, but it is some other reason.

arkle · Answer

IanStewart  - thanks for looking into this. Here is what I thought -

Premise - "women who ran for state and national offices were about as likely to win as men" - Fact # 1

The conclusion says that - "the reason there are so few women who win elections for these offices is not that women have difficulty winning elections but that so few women want to run" --> women don't want to run else they will win.

Now option (E)Many more women than men who want to run for state and national offices do not because they cannot get adequate funding for their campaigns.

At best this option is Irrelevant because this is pointing to a different problem as to why women can't run.They want to but they can't because of funding

a)want to run;
b)winnability

However,option (A) says that women ran but they lost. - Agreed that this is refuting the premise,but this is a better one between A and E.

IanStewart · Answer

But this is exactly what you often want to do, when trying to weaken the conclusion of a GMAT CR argument. You often want to find an alternative explanation for the facts. Here, the conclusion is "women don't want to run in elections". The argument is just guessing that's true (it doesn't give any evidence about whether women want to run for office). The conclusion is one possible explanation for the facts in the stem. But if we had an alternative explanation for the facts in the stem, that would weaken the conclusion. And that's what E does. If E is true, that gives us a reason different from the one in the conclusion why women do not run for office. It's not because they don't want to; it's because they cannot secure funding.

mallya12 · Answer

How do we eliminate option A and B?
What if there was an answer choice stating many women who run for state and national offices run against each other? Could this weaken?

GMATNinja · Answer

The question asks us to undermine the author's conclusion, so let's take another look at that conclusion: "the reason there are so few women who win elections for these offices is not that women have difficulty winning elections but that so few women want to run." The evidence cited to reach this conclusion is: "...women who ran for state and national offices were about as likely to win as men." "However, only about fifteen percent of the candidates for these offices were women." Take a look at (A): From the passage, we know that overall, women who run for state and national offices are as likely to win as men are. This answer choice just tells us that a certain subset of women -- incumbents, or those who are already in office -- are less likely to win an election than are their male counterparts. So, the difference in results for incumbents must somehow be made up by the results of other elections. This information does not change the fact that only fifteen percent of candidates for office are women, or undermine the author's conclusion that there are so few women in office because "so few women want to run." This information is irrelevant to the author's conclusion, so we can eliminate (A). Answer choice (B) tells us that most elections pit a female candidate against a male candidate. If this were true, it wouldn't change the fact that very few women run, and that women are about as likely as men to win in an election. (B) does not undermine the author's conclusion. Now, look at (E): Here we go -- this one clearly undermines the conclusion that so few women are in office because they don't want to run. Answer choice (E) tells us that many women do, in fact, want to run, but cannot get adequate funding for their campaigns. This destroys the author's conclusion, so (E) is our answer. To your question about an alternate answer choice: creating your own answer choices is rarely helpful in answering the question. The one you posed might be interesting, but would not get you any closer to answering the actual question.

I hope that helps!

fahdman · Answer

Hello,

I am sorry but I think argument E is assumsing 1) that women want to run but they loose at the end (because of the lack of funding).  Now how I understood the argument : Not because 2) they don't have fudning at first and then they don't participate in the elections at all. So, I think 1) is somehow also strenghtening the conclusion since very few women ran because they don't have funding (it doesn't matter because of what but still very few women ran).

To be eble to answer this confusion we need an information stating what was first, not participating at all because of funding or participating and loosing becaue of funding. these I think are very different. and even if you can't get funding that means you have difficult ywinning elections I don't see how this argument works. @bunnuel  GMATNinja

GMATNinja · Answer

Take another look at the exact language of (E):

This tells us that women WANT to run for office, but they do  not  run. Why? Because they can't get enough funding. So, this fits with your second scenario -- these women don't run at all, despite the fact that they want to.

This blows a big hole in the argument, which says that few women win because few women want to run. According to (E), many women DO want to run, but sadly, they can't due to lack of funding. So (E) is the correct answer.

I hope that helps!

Cmulenga · Answer

I don’t like this question or the answer.

Posted from my mobile device

VerbalBot · Answer

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Last year in the United States, women who ran for state and national

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