GRE Reading Comprehension
Home > GRE Test > GRE Reading Comprehension Questions
Next steps
- Use your browser's back button to return to your test results.
- Do more GRE Reading Comprehension Questions.
Source: NO5
Feelings of hopelessness among medieval workers trapped in the poverty cycle gradually lessened as it became possible for women's labor to supplement a family's money income by more than pennies. By 1300, women spinners could be found working on their own for wealthy sponsors, even after the introduction in Italy and France of a prohibition against advancing money for supplies to women spinners. Historians have usually interpreted this prohibition simply as evidence of women's economic subjection, since it obliged them to turn to usurers; however, it was also almost certainly a response to a trend toward differential reward for women's higher skill. Yarn can be spun irregularly and lumpily, but perfectly smooth yarn is worth more. Working for merchant entrepreneurs on time rates.women had been paid hardly more than children; working as entrepreneurs themselves and producing good work by the piece, they could break into the rational system of differential rewards.
The passage implies which of the following about women spinners in medieval Europe?
- A Most of them worked independently for wealthy sponsors.
- B They were not typical of medieval women entrepreneurs.
- C Some of them were paid for their work after it was done, according to its value.
- D They would have been able to contribute substantial amounts to their families incomes were it not for the prohibition against advancing money to them.
- E They were inevitably disadvantaged in the marketplace because they were obliged to obtain money for their supplies from usurers.