Twice in the Same Day,Carlos Used the Wrong Pronoun When

question 1

Multiple Choice

Twice in the same day,Carlos used the wrong pronoun when asking questions.The first time,his friend Eric said that he was going to see the doctor,whom he finds quite competent."Where is his office?" asked Carlos.Eric replied,"Her office is in the hospital annex." The second time,his niece Maya said that she liked her kindergarten teacher very much."What's her name?" asked Carlos.Maya replied,"His name is Mr.Ngo." Both times,Carlos was embarrassed at his error.From a critical feminist point of view,which is the most likely explanation for Carlos' mistakes?

• A)Doctors are most often men and kindergarten teachers are most often women,so Carlos naturally assumed that he was using the right pronouns.
• B)Many types of work still have gender associations;Carlos used the pronouns most associated with the gender-identification of doctors and kindergarten teachers.
• C)Most men who go into kindergarten teaching ride the glass escalator to administrative positions very quickly,so Carlos assumed that a man wouldn't be teaching his niece's class so late in the school year.
• D)Women's nurturing natures make them good kindergarten teachers,while men's inherent rationality make them good doctors,so Carlos assumed that the praise was related to these people's natural ability to do their jobs well.

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Definitions:

Population proportion

The ratio of members in a population that have a particular attribute or characteristic, represented as a fraction or percentage of the total.

Standard error of the mean

The standard deviation of the sampling distribution of the mean, indicating the variability of sample means around the population mean.

Average hourly income

The mean amount of money earned by an individual or group per hour of work.

Standard deviation

A measure of the dispersion or variability of a set of numerical data, indicating how much the individual data points deviate from the mean (average) of the data set.