2016考研英语最新时文阅读：性别差异

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男性与女性的差异问题在历年考研英语真题阅读中出现过几次，是考生需要了解的重点话题。今天我们回顾一下2000年的考研英语阅读真题，再次了解一下性别差异问题的相关信息。一起来看一下具体内容：

Being a man has always been dangerous.There are about 105 males born for every 100 females, but this ratio drops to near balance at the age of maturity, and among 70-year-olds there are twice as many women as men. But the great universal of male mortality is being changed. Now, by babies survive almost as well as girls do. This means that, for the first time, there will be an excess of boys in those crucial years when the are searching for a mate. More important, another chance for natural selection has been removed. Fifty years ago, the chance of a baby (particularly a boy baby) surviving depended on its weight. A kilogram too light or too heavy meant almost certain death. Today it makes almost no difference. Since much of the variation is due to genes one more agent of evolution has gone.

婴儿出生的男女性别比例约为105:100，这对男性而言是极其危险的，因为到了成年阶段，这个数字差异反而会缩小，到了70岁的时候男性仅剩下女性的一半。现在男性死亡率偏高的情形正在发生变化，男孩存活率几乎同女婴一样高。这就意味着男孩到了寻找伴侣的关键年龄将首次出现男孩过剩现象。更重要的是，又一次自然选择的机会不复存在了。50年前，婴儿(尤其是男婴)存活的机会取决于体重，过轻或过重几乎意味着必死无疑。今日体重几乎不起什么作用，因为大部分差异是由基因引起的，又一个进化的因素消失了。

There is another way to commit evolutionary suicide: stay alive, but have fewer children. Few people are as fertile as in the past. Nowadays the number of births, like the age of death, has become average. Most of us have roughly the same number of offspring. Again, differences between people and the opportunity for natural selection to take advantage of it have diminished. India shows what is happening. The country offers wealth for a few in the great cities and poverty for the remaining tribal peoples. The grand mediocrity of today — everyone being the same in survival and number of offspring — means that natural selection has lost 80% of its power in upper-middle-class India compared to the tribes.

还有另外一种方式会造成进化自杀，那就是减少生育孩子的数量。现代社会已经很少有人会生过多的孩子。并且婴儿的出生率与死亡率也渐渐趋同，大多数人的后代数量基本相同。人们之间的差异以及利用这种差异进行自然选择的机会进一步减少了。印度就可以说明正在发生的一切。这个国家给大城市里的少数人提供财富，而给其余的各部落民族以贫困。今天这种极其显著的平均化——每个人的生存机会和子女数量都相同——意味着与部落相比较，自然选择在印度中、上层已经失去了80%的效力。

在历年真题当中考研英语一2008年text 1，以及英语二2013年text 3都考到了性别差异与性别平等问题。所以建议2016考研的考生将此类话题文章再拿出来，做统一的复习回顾，这样再次出现同类话题时就比较方便理解了。预祝2016考研考生金榜题名!