hassu13 wrote:
GMATNinja wrote:
hassu13 wrote:
GMATNinja
For the primary purpose , can you pl explain why B is not the answer.
The politicians and other scholars regard labor market as the cause of better maternity leave policies . Hence they have discredited the explanation-govt policy` impact. Author has provided evidences to ensure that public policy does hold a significant place. Hence b seems to be a valid answer.
Quote:
(B) reexamine a previously discredited explanation for a phenomenon in light of new evidence
The explanation the author reexamines is: the labor market explains employers' maternity-leave policies more than public policy.
At no point are we told that this explanation has been
previously discredited. Rather, this explanation has been widely accepted by "many politicians, business leaders, and scholars." Maybe the confusion is coming from the fact that those people have "discounted the role of public policy"? They do not, however, discredit the explanation that the author examines.
The author is writing this passage in order to question the wide acceptance of this explanation. If anyone is discrediting the explanation, it's the author -- nobody else previously did so.
I hope this helps!
GMATNinja your perception from the passage is that the explanation is: does the labor market explain employers' maternity-leave policies more than public policy. However, what i percieve from the passage is the explanation that: public policy holds more importance in the maternity leave policies. This explanation of public policy holding predence was discounted. Hence, the explanation of public policy was discredited. To emphasise more on his explanation, the author has given further evidences that have happened in the past.
Hence, i feel that the option b is correct. The perception of yours is different from mine.
I still cant get how am i wrong.
What explanation has
previously been discredited?
In order for us to accept choice (B) as correct, we must show that there was some
prior explanation that emphasized public policy. We must also show that this phantom explanation was, at some point
in the past, discredited. To "reexamine a previously discredited explanation in light of new evidence" would involve:
1) describing an old explanation,
2) telling us that it previously was discredited,
3) telling us about some new evidence, and then
4) reexamining that same old explanation in light of the new evidence.
That's not what happens in this passage. The author describes a commonly held, present-day explanation that emphasizes the role of labor markets: "employers were already providing maternity leave
in response to the increase in the number of women workers." Ah, okay, so the number of women workers increased, and that's why employers started providing maternity leave. This is what many politicians, business leaders, and scholars believe to this day.
This portion of the passage...
Quote:
Employers did create maternity-leave programs in the 1970’s and 1980’s, but not as a purely voluntary response in the absence of any government mandate. In 1972, the Equal Employment Opportunity Commission (EEOC) ruled that employers who allowed leaves for disabling medical conditions must also allow them for maternity and that failure to do so would constitute sex discrimination under the Civil Rights Act of 1964. As early as 1973, a survey found that 58 percent of large employers had responded with new maternity-leave policies. Because the 1972 EEOC ruling was contested in court, the ruling won press attention that popularized maternity-leave policies.
...is dedicated to presenting an alternative to the commonly held explanation.
The author
does not reexamine what happened with the number of women in markets. The author does not reexamine the relationship between this number and employers' decision to provide maternity leave. Instead, the author
presents an entirely new explanation: that public policy rulings focused on discrimination led to maternity leave being introduced as early as 1973.
So, is the primary purpose to reexamine an explanation from the past? No. There was no past explanation to reexamine. In order to accept (B), we'd really have to twist some of the author's words or ignore critical wording in choice (B) as it's written.
The primary purpose of the passage is to present the author's new explanation -- an alternative to a commonly accepted explanation. (A) is a much better answer than (B), so we stick with (A).
I hope this helps!
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