If

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Read the passage and then answer the question that follows it.

The Kauffman Foundation in the US has found that, though women make up 46 per cent of the US workforce and 50 per cent of college graduates, only 35 per cent of business founders are women. Lesa Mitchell of the Foundation argues that the disparity between these figures prevents more high-growth companies being formed and so reduces the level of job-creation.

Question: Which TWO of the following must Lesa Mitchell believe to be true, even though she hasn’t stated them?

(A) Women are discouraged from setting up businesses.

(B) High growth companies are the biggest source of jobs in the US.

(C) A high proportion of business founders are college graduates.

(D) Businesses set up by women become high-growth companies.

(E) If women set up more businesses, then high-growth companies would create more jobs.

(F) Men are not already starting up enough businesses to ensure that job-creation is not reduced.

(G) If women set up more businesses, a significant number of these would become high-growth companies.

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Answers

Read the passage and then answer the question that follows it.

The Kauffman Foundation in the US has found that, though women make up 46 per cent of the US workforce and 50 per cent of college graduates, only 35 per cent of business founders are women. Lesa Mitchell of the Foundation argues that the disparity between these figures prevents more high-growth companies being formed and so reduces the level of job-creation.

Question: Which TWO of the following must Lesa Mitchell believe to be true, even though she hasn’t stated them?

  • (F) is correct. For Lesa Mitchell to see the percentages of women in the US workforce, college graduates who are female, and that for female business-founders to have a significance for the number of high-growth companies, she must assume that, if women were to set up more businesses, a significant number of them would be those with high-growth.
  • (G) is correct. The argument that job-creation is suppressed because women are not setting up a higher number of businesses needs to assume that men aren’t already keeping job-creation at a high level through setting up a sufficiently large number of businesses.
  • (A) is incorrect. The argument does not require this general claim. Lesa Mitchell does not consider why women do not set up more businesses, just that the number should be higher.
  • (B) is incorrect. Though Lesa Mitchell sees job-creation and high-growth companies as connected, this goes too far: it could be that Mitchell would accept the opposite of (B).
  • (C) is incorrect. The difference between the percentage of female college graduates and that of female business-founders is significant for Mitchell’s argument but (C) is too general to need to be assumed.
  • (D) is incorrect. Mitchell is concerned with the relatively low number of business founded by women, but her argument does not require that she sees such businesses as always being high-growth ones.
  • (E) is incorrect. Mitchell sees high-growth companies as a source of job-creation, but this causal link between women setting up businesses and job-creation by high-growth companies is not required in the argument.