Prime Time 7/8, Language in Use, Arbeitsheft

Are single women discriminated against at work? Read through the text below and underline all the expressions that have something to do with the world of work and with women and their role in the workplace. 5 Your co-worker with a three-year-old leaves at 5:30 every evening, while you stay until 7:30 (at least). You’re asked to take a weekend shift or deal with Saturday conference calls because everyone else on your team has kids they need to spend time with. When an issue needs to be sorted out after six, you are somehow always the only one available, and it’s made clear that your date plans are not a priority. If this sounds like you, you may be the victim of what a recent Marie Claire article calls “the newest form of workplace discrimination: Single women who carry an unfair burden at the office, and stand in for their married-with- kids co-workers.” Employers have got used to working parents leaving at a reasonable hour and not working weekends, they’ve also got used to single staffers, particularly single women, picking up the work that employees with kids won’t get to. The result for those single women is no personal life, which limits both their overall well-being and their ability to meet a prospective partner and have children of their own. Even if single men face the same dilemma, it’s easy to see how single women are especially vulnerable to it. The most popular job for American women as of 2010 is still secretary/ administrative assistant, which has been a top ten job for women for the last 50 years. We’re historically conditioned to think of female workers as those who support other workers. At the same time, women have just been told to be as ambitious as they can, which can very easily translate into saying “yes” to whatever project is handed to them. 5 10 15 20 25 30 35 (Margaret Wheeler Johnson, The Huffington Post , 26 June 2013; adapted and abridged) Language in use: Female authors who use male pseudonyms You are going to read a text about female authors and their choice of pseudonyms. In most lines of the text there is a word that should not be there. Write that word in the space provided after each line. Some lines are correct. Indicate these lines with a tick ( ü ). There are two examples at the beginning. The use of pseudonyms by writers is as super rich and varied as the history super 0 of literature itself. Every author has his or her own reason for publishing ü 00 certain works under a pen friend name. Some authors want to branch out Q1 into other genres without of risking their reputations in an attempt to Q2 explore a new writing voice over with minimal consequence. However, the Q3 adoption of pen names is not always the author’s choice. There was a time Q4 when female writers were led to believe in that their gender prevented their Q5 works from being taken seriously modern. Though women have made great Q6 strides in literature, that same out-dated belief continues to affect women Q7 writers. Perhaps recognising some out of the more famous writers who Q8 found no success after leaving their male pseudonyms behind will show Q9 that a woman doesn’t need a man’s name to set the literary world ablaze. Q10 One last example is J.K. Rowling, who was told by her publisher that her series Q11 wouldn’t be as popular among boys if it was published under the name of a Q12 woman. So she used to a set of initials instead (not even her own, since she Q13 has no first middle name) and, as we all know, the Harry Potter books Q14 catapulted in popularity even after her gender role was revealed. Q15 What would the world of literature be like without the contributions of these Q16 women? It is not very sad that, despite all of the achievements of female Q17 writers, a novel’s commercial success is still connected to its author’s gender – Q18 at least in the black eyes of publishers. Q19 6 67 13 Gender issues Nur zu Prüfzwecken – Eig ntum des Verlags öbv