READING: Single-sex schools are more likely to produce high-flying career girls (B2 / C1)

Read the newspaper article and fill in the blanks with ONE suitable word. 

There are five words you do not need to use.

Single-sex schools are more likely to produce high-flying career girls

A study claims pupils educated within an all-female environment are much more likely to take chances than their coed peers

Jamie Doward

The Observer, Sunday 8 January 2012

If you want your daughter to be a high-flying businesswoman or banker, send her to a single-sex school. This is the startling conclusion drawn from new research charting the complex relationship between gender and risk-taking.

Next month's edition of the Economic Journal (1)__________ the results of an experiment by two economists at the University of Essex. Alison Booth and Patrick Nolen devised a series of questions for 260 male and female pupils that were designed to (2)__________ their appetite for risk. The pupils, from eight state single-sex and coeducational schools in Essex and Suffolk, were asked to choose between a real-stakes lottery and a sure (3)__________ . Option 1 guaranteed they won £5, while option 2 entered them in a lottery in which they would flip a coin and receive £11 if the coin came up heads or £2 tails.

The economists found that, on average, girls were 16% less likely than boys to (4)__________ for the lottery. But significantly, they found that girls in coed schools were 36% less likely to select the lottery than their male peers. The findings appear to confirm the (5)__________ view that males have a greater appetite for risk than females and go some way to indicating that this may be down to the environment in which a young person grows up.

Girls at single-sex schools were also (6)__________ to invest more in a hypothetical risky investment than coed female and all-male pupils.

The findings have important (7)__________ for the emerging field of experimental economics, which examines why there is an under-representation of women in the City. The economists write: "If the majority of remuneration in (8)__________ jobs is tied to bonuses based on a company's performance... women may choose not to take these jobs because of the (9)__________ ."

Anecdotal evidence suggests the economists may be on to something. Some of the City's most (10)__________ businesswomen went to all-girls' schools. Alison Cooper, chief executive of FTSE 100 company Imperial Tobacco, was a pupil at Tiffin Girls' School, Kingston upon Thames; fund manager Nicola Horlick and financier Baroness Vadera both (11)__________ single-sex – albeit private – institutions.

The economists admit they have (12)__________ to explain their findings fully. However, they suggest that "adolescent females... may be… inhibited by culturally driven norms and beliefs about the appropriate mode of female behaviour – (13)__________ risk." Once they are placed in an all-female environment, (14)__________ , they say, this inhibition is reduced. As Booth and Nolen conclude: "No longer reminded of their own gender identity and society's norms, they find it easier to make riskier choices than women who are (15)__________ in a coed class."

1. assisted	2. attended	3. avoiding	4. bet	5. carries
6. choose	7. despite	8. focuses	9. high-paying	10. however
11.implications	12. long-held	13. measure	14. opt	15. placed
16. succeed	17. successful	18. uncertainty	19. willing	20. yet

ANSWER KEY: 1. carries 2. measure 3. bet 4. opt 5. long-held 6. willing 7. implications 8. high-paying 9. uncertainty 10. successful 11. attended 12. yet 13. avoiding 14. however 15. placed.