GMAT考试写作例文224篇连载(九七)

97. “In business, more than in any other social arena¹, men and women have learned how to share power effectively.”
Discuss the extent to which you agree or disagree with the opinion stated above. Support your views with reasons and/or examples from your own experience, observations, or reading.

The stated opinion is vague, with no clear meaning for “sharing power effectively.” But if this phrase is intended to convey the idea that roughly equal numbers of men and women occupy prestige and high-paying positions in business, then I believe the claim at issue is mistaken for two reasons.
First of all, it is not the case that women are demonstrably more successful at attaining² powerful positions in business than in other social arenas³. Admittedly, the percentage of women earning degrees and entering the business world is significantly greater than in other prestigious⁴ professions such as medicine, engineering or science. However, the ratio of women in graduate business programs and in business management positions is about the same as in law schools and firms, or in Ph.D. programs and in teaching positions in higher education. In business, law and higher education, the proportion of professional women is around 40 percent.
Secondly⁵, very few women achieve the highest-level positions in business. Recent studies indicate that women occupy just under 3 percent of corporate⁶ executive positions from the vice⁷ president level on up. And more importantly, this percentage has not changed significantly during the past ten or fifteen years, a period during which the number of women in management careers in record numbers, they are setting into lower level jobs while their male counterparts are achieving the more powerful ones.
There is considerable controversy⁸ about the reasons why women tend to crowd around the bottom of the business career ladder. Some blame the proverbial glass ceiling, said to be held firmly in place by an “old boy network.” Others claim that women are naturally held back as they struggle to fulfill⁹ the dual¹⁰ roes¹¹ of professional and family caregiver. In any case, women are not any more successful in achieving powerful positions in business than in some other high prestige careers; and they do not share power effectively with men and within the business world itself.