2025年06月六级第3套仔细阅读 Passage 2 原文翻译及答案解析

Women have historically been paid less. But in the US in the 1980s, they began to catch up - fast. During that decade , the gender pay gap closed by about one percentage point a year. Had that trend continued, the gender wage gap would have been closed by 2017.

历史上，女性收入较低。但在20世纪80年代的美国，她们开始快速追赶。在那十年间，性别薪酬差距每年缩小约一个百分点。如果这种趋势持续，性别工资差距本应在2017年消除。

But the trend didn't continue, and the gap remained yawning.

但这种趋势并未持续，差距依然巨大。

According to a new study from academics at Harvard, the stagnation can be put down, perhaps counterintuitively, to the introduction of state and federal family leave policies.

根据哈佛大学学者的一项新研究，这种停滞可能（或许出乎意料地）归因于州和联邦家庭休假政策的引入。

The academics argue that during the 1990s, as governments began to introduce leave policies, it was mainly women who took advantage of them. Though the leave policies might have helped those women to stay in the workplace — instead of dropping out to have families -- those who returned saw their wages had increased at lower rates than the men.

学者们认为，在20世纪90年代，随着政府开始引入休假政策，主要是女性利用了这些政策。尽管休假政策可能帮助这些女性留在职场——而不是退出去组建家庭——但那些重返职场的女性发现，她们的工资增长速度低于男性。

After family leave was introduced in the US, in fact, the rate of gender wage convergence fell to just 0.03 percentage points per year, and has remained there ever since.

事实上，在美国引入家庭休假后，性别工资趋同率降至每年仅0.03个百分点，并一直保持至今。

Those monitoring the process towards salary equity at work have long watched as progress slowed in many countries around the world. In fact, that progress began to reverse during the pandemic (大流行病).

长期以来，那些关注职场薪酬公平进程的人看到，在全球许多国家，进展有所放缓。事实上，这种进展在大流行病期间开始倒退。

The gender pay gap is one of the most outstanding examples of that lack of parity (平等), and still exists just about everywhere. The motherhood penalty has become a shorthand for describing why: In many places, especially rich countries, women earn the same as men until they reach their childbearing years. Women who have children begin to see their salaries lag behind their male counterparts.

性别薪酬差距是缺乏平等的最突出例子之一，并且几乎无处不在。'母职惩罚'已成为描述这一现象原因的简称：在许多地方，尤其是富裕国家，女性在达到生育年龄之前，收入与男性相同。但有孩子的女性开始发现，她们的工资落后于男性同行。

Part of this is because women take on more of the unpaid labor at home, which can eat into time available for work and energy for career advancement. But it's also because mothers are passed over for raises and promotion, and because time out of the workplace sets women back, even if that time is taken voluntarily, and supported by company or government policy.

部分原因是女性承担了更多家务无偿劳动，这可能会占用可用于工作的时间和职业发展的精力。但也因为母亲们被忽视加薪和晋升机会，以及离开职场的时间会让女性落后，即使这些时间是自愿的，并得到公司或政府政策的支持。

What would have happened if leave policies hadn't been introduced? The study doesn't go into that question, other than to say that if the 1980s trend continued, we would have been at parity by now.

如果休假政策没有被引入，会发生什么？该研究没有深入探讨这个问题，只是说如果20世纪80年代的趋势持续，我们现在应该已经达到平等了。

It's possible, however, that the journey towards wage parity would have stalled either way. If women's gains in the 1980s were made through the erasure of things like bias, once those less uncontrollable problems had been addressed, there would still have been an issue with women—who are the ones to bear children and take care of them in the early weeks because of biological factors like the ability to breastfeed, forcing them to take breaks, whether or not those breaks were mandated.

然而，无论哪种方式，通往工资平等的旅程可能都会停滞。如果女性在20世纪80年代的进展是通过消除偏见等因素实现的，一旦那些不太可控的问题得到解决，女性仍然会面临问题——她们是生育和早期照顾孩子的人，因为生物学因素如哺乳能力，迫使她们不得不休假，无论这些休假是否被强制。