Q10

[lhermary]

Why is A a better answer then D here?

Thanks

[ManhattanPrepLSAT1]

We're asked to undermine the author's analysis for the reason more women missionaries were sent abroad beginning in the 1870's. The author offers an explanation in lines 25-30, in which it is donations made by women's groups that forced the hand of churches to send more missionary women abroad.

Answer choice (A) would undermine this explanation by requiring us to explain why the churches sending the most missionary women were not receiving the money raised by women's groups. This answer choice severs the connection between the money raised by women's groups and the increased number of missionary women.

Incorrect Answers

(B) is irrelevant. This answer choice addresses why women would want to go, but not why they found new opportunities to go.
(C) is irrelevant. The author does not base the increased number of missionary women on a need for medical practitioners. The author states in lines 4-7 that the presence of increased missionary women was made possible by changes in the missionary movement back home.
(D) is irrelevant. The question is asking for why these women were sent, not which ones were chosen to go.
(E) strengthens the argument by eliminating a potential alternative explanation that the presence of women on the boards themselves would have triggered the increased role for missionary women.

[LaCrosse]

This is a question I missed because I was very reluctant to pick the answer choice (A). Firstly, the absence of the phrase “auxiliary groups” in the passage seemed like a red flag to me. Secondly, what we are told is that “women’s foreign mission societies” (Lines 7-11) and “women’s groups” (Lines 25-30) raised and donated a lot of money “in support of single women missionaries.” It is not stated that the women’s groups then handed over the money to the Western church boards who then sent single women to be missionaries abroad. Lines 13-17 gives credit for the change to the women’s foreign mission societies by saying “these organizations enabled an increasing number of single women missionaries to work abroad” and lines 27-30 say “the home churches bowed both to women’s changing roles at home and to increasing numbers of single professional missionary women abroad.” The verb “bowed” means “to yield; submit“, not “to take the lead/active part in”.

Most importantly, nowhere in the passage does it state that only the Western church boards get to send missionaries abroad or even that the majority of single women missionaries have been sent abroad by the Western church boards. If we take the answer choice (A) to be true, then a scenario in which a Western church board that sends 2 single women missionaries abroad (with other Western church boards sending 1 or zero) while women’s foreign mission societies send 500 single women missionaries abroad would in no way undermine the author’s analysis that the fundraising done by the women’s groups is what caused more single women to do their mission work abroad.

The wrong answer (E) seemed like it would do more to weaken the explanation that more single women missionaries went to China because of the fundraising done by the women’s foreign mission societies. It does however require equating the term “women’s foreign mission societies” with “foreign mission boards”. The fact that not a single member of the women’s foreign mission societies/boards was the beneficiary of her own fundraising work seems to suggest the fundraising done by these societies/boards did not end up sending many single women missionaries abroad after all.