1 . Women were less likely than men to support the Vietnam war, the Gulf war, or the invasions of Afghanistan and Iraq. They commit far fewer murders. They are less likely to favor strikes. For some scholars, these are grounds for thinking that a world run by women would be more peaceful.
But European history suggests otherwise, according to political scientists Oeindrila Dube and S. P. Harish. They studied how often European rulers went to war between 1480 and 1913, and found that states ruled by queens were 27% more likely to get involved in wars than those ruled by kings.
This was not all the queens’ fault: men, seeing them as soft targets, tended to attack them. Frederick the Great of Prussia once declared: ”No woman should ever be allowed to govern anything.“ Shortly after becoming king, he attacked the newly crowned Archduchess of Austria, Maria Theresa, and seized Silesia province. Despite years of war, she never recovered it.
But perceived weakness is not the whole story. Queens, the researchers found, were more likely to gain new territory. Catherine the Great expanded her empire by some 200,000 square miles. And married queens were more aggressive than single queens or kings, whether single or married.
The authors suggest several reasons for this. First, married queens may have been able to form more military alliances(联盟),making them confident enough to pick fights. Their husbands had often served in the army before they married, and were well placed to strengthen military ties between their homelands and their wives’ states.
Second, unlike most kings, queens often gave their husbands a lot of power,putting them in charge of foreign policy or the economy. During the 1740s, Maria Theresa’s husband, Francis I, reformed the Austrian economy and raised money for the armed forces while his wife ruled much of central Europe. Prince Albert was Queen Victoria’s most trusted adviser, shaping her foreign policy until his death in1861. This division of labor, the authors suggest, freed up time for queens to pursue more aggressive policies.
The modern era, too, has witnessed female leaders in wars: Golda Meir and the Yom Kippur war, or Margaret Thatcher and the Falklands. The number of countries led by women has more than doubled since 2000, but there is plenty of room for improvement: the current level of 15 represents less than 10 % of the total. A world in which more women took power might be more equal. Whether it would be more peaceful is a different question.
1. The underlined “perceived weakness” in paragraph 4 means that________.| A．women were less likely to support wars |
| B．women could not recover lost territory |
| C．women commit far fewer crimes |
| D．women were soft targets |
| A．Because their military alliances picked fights for them. |
| B．Because they were ambitious and aggressive by nature. |
| C．Because their husbands were supportive in state governing. |
| D．Because they centralized all power into their own hands. |
| A．To imply there is room for improvement in gender equality. |
| B．To indicate more females become leaders in modern times. |
| C．To illustrate female leaders cannot prevent wars in modern times. |
| D．To suggest female leaders have their share of wars in modern times. |
| A．married women are not fit to govern their states on their own |
| B．female leaders should be responsible for all wars throughout history |
| C．the world wouldn’t be more peaceful even if more women took power |
| D．the division of labor allows queens to survive economic crisis |
