December 2008 LSAT Section 4 Question 24

Suppose that two proposals were put forward by lawmakers concerning housing reform today. Which one of the following ...

Ceci_Perez on May 3, 2021

Can someone please explain why E is incorrect and A is Correct?

I struggled to decide between A and E, and I eventually eliminated A because, at the end of the second paragraph, the author says that, in some ways, the 2nd proposal still cast women in domestic roles. Because of this, I didn't get the sense that the 2nd proposal was "non-discriminatory." On the other hand, E uses the term "equal quality," which seems to more accurately characterize the proposal, which advocated for coeducational schools (e.g., same schools = equal quality). There seems to be a much more marginal difference between how A and E each characterize the first proposal -- "low-cost housing" is closely associated with the idea of expanding access to housing, which, in the broadest sense, would be universal access to housing. To sum this up into a concrete question, how is the author's mention of the 2nd proposal's shortfalls w/ respect to casting women in domestic roles analogous to "nondiscriminatory" housing?

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Emil-Kunkin on November 2, 2023

For analogy questions, I try to start with the initial items in the passage.

The first proposal tried to offer education to everyone, with the critical caveat that it would only be available to women up to a certain age.

The second was must more meaningful, it actually did set out to create real education for all, although it did suffer from traditional notions of the role of women.

Neither of these really are a perfect fit for the first halves of a or e, and I agree they are more or less marginal.

It's the second half that does it. The first proposal was inherently discriminatory as it treated female students differently than male students, they only would be schooled through age eight. This formal discrimination was eliminated in the second proposal.

This is a good match for A. I don't see any connection between this and E's suggestion of building low cost housing. There's nothing about price in the second proposal.