Within the past six months, women have, for the first time, become the

Really good one, little tricky....
+1 B

This question is deceivingly difficult.

I'd have to go with B

Great breakdown, mailnavin1! I think you nailed it. The correct answer here is B - as in all Inference questions, the correct answer is something that MUST BE TRUE based on the stimulus.

C is tricky, but not necessarily true. The only information we have is based specifically on percentages/proportions - we don't know about the total number. It could very well be that in this current recession many people have taken themselves out of the workforce, so there are fewer people overall in that pool, but women simply account for a larger percentage. Because we don't know anything about actual numbers - just percentages - we can't draw this conclusion even though it's pretty likely.

B is much more readily proven - we know that women comprise more than 50% of the population but have always been outnumbered by men, so they are that "at least one group" that has been underrepresented.


Great point, metallican - "workforce" does account for all potential workers (including those looking for jobs), and I can't say for certain whether the author of this question intended specifically to use that term or whether he wanted to talk about the current number employed. I don't think the distinction matters for this question, though - the correct answer uses a fairly vague "in employment", so the presence of women in the workforce does point toward that, and the rest of the passage still flows (it may well be that the manufacturing employees who have lost their jobs have taken themselves out of the workforce...those extended unemployment benefits sound like a pretty sweet deal to me right now, slaving away behind a desk!).

actually by poe i reached B, though i did not understand what B precisely meant. 'at least one group' was a bit unclear. but rest of the options could be logically eliminated , so B

I agree, I didn't understand what "at least one group" meant. To me this also seemed very opinionated in its representation, like when you have a question about the environment and the answer choices include the polar opposite political archetype responses (like "global warming is a hoax" or "oil industry is the sole cause of global warming"). I narrowed down the choices to B and C, but chose C because of the above thought process. I know its not a hard and fast rule but given the time constraints and processing of vague information thats the conclusion I reached here.

someone kindly explain why C is wrong i am not able to find the reason.

[quote="shubham2312"]someone kindly explain why C is wrong i am not able to find the reason.[/quote

Example in employment:

Say CURRENTLY:
900women/700men

But PREVIOUSLY: 1000womem/1500men:

Although more women THAN men now, we CANNOT say:

The No of women now is greater than ever before

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