Ejercicio Text A - Task 1 · Inglés PAU Murcia Ordinaria 2021

Text A

Should a King be more than a Queen?

A woman in the Netherlands was unhappy that a King is more valuable than a Queen in a deck of playing cards.

Indy Mellink, 23, wondered if that situation could be changed. She said rating a male higher than a female was just another part of life that makes people think men are more important than women. Some people call this gender inequality. Instead, treating women and men in the same way, they say, is an example of gender neutrality.

Some people might say: “It’s just a card game.” But Mellink does not agree. She said: “Even subtle inequalities like this do play a big role” in influencing the way the world sees women.

So what did she do? Mellink thought for a while about how to change the pictures on the cards. After some time, she came up with an idea that most people know because of the Olympic Games. The most important card would no longer be the King, it would be Gold. The next card would be Silver and the third, Bronze. For that reason, Mellink’s cards are now called GSB, which stands for Gold, Silver, Bronze. The idea is to remove gender hierarchy and race differences from card decks. “Why should the King have a higher position than the Queen? Why should the King, Queen and Jack be white? However, rather than complicating the sex and race debate even more, we decided to remove the race and gender factor as a whole and introduce a common, universally known ranking system. All the other cards in the deck are as usual.”

Card players involved in product testing said they had never thought about gender inequality in their games before. Changes to the rules of card games that rank the King above the Queen may take some time, but some serious players are trying out Mellink’s cards. Berit van Dobbenburgh is head of the Dutch Bridge 1 Association. She gave it a try, and said she thought it was a good idea to think about gender neutrality. “It’s great that someone of this age has noticed this. It’s the new generation,” she said.

1 Bridge: A cards game.

1. Read the text and decide whether statements 1.1 to 1.4 are true or false. Then, find a text fragment which confirms your answer in either case. Write “TRUE” or “FALSE” plus the fragment (one or two lines maximum) on your answer sheet. [Score: 4 items × 0.5 marks = 2 marks]

E.g.: In a game of cards, a King is more valuable than a Queen. TRUE. EVIDENCE: “... a King is more valuable than a Queen in a deck of playing cards.”

1.1.

Gender neutrality can be defined as not treating one gender (e.g., males) better than the other gender (e.g., females).

Decision:

TRUE

FALSE

1.2.

Indy Mellink was at the Olympic Games when she came up with the idea of changing the pictures on the cards.

Decision:

TRUE

FALSE

1.3.

Substituting the King, Queen, and Jack cards by the Gold, Silver, and Bronce cards could contribute to eliminate the gender and race factors from card games.

Decision:

TRUE

FALSE

1.4.

Card players testing Mellink’s cards don’t take her product seriously.

Decision:

TRUE

FALSE