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.
