Read the following passage and mark the letter A, B, C, or D on your answer sheet to indicate the correct word or phrase that best fits each of the question.

   Since its birth in the middle of the 19th century, the women’s rights movement has taken root and spread throughout the world. In many countries women have fought for the right to vote, the right to work, the right to be educated to the limit of their capacities, the right to own and dispose of property, and for equal rights within marriage. The cause has penetrated world governments via the United Nations which in 1946 set up a special commission to study the worldwide status of women and make recommendations to the Social and Economic Council on ways of improving it. UNESCO too assists in the advancement of women by seeking top involve them in educational and cultural programmes.

   In addition, a multitude of women’s organizations exist in individual countries to further, at national and international levels, the eradication of remaining areas of discrimination. Through their affiliation with international feminist bodies, they are in touch with women’s activities and achievements in all parts of the world.

   However, with half the world’s population still illiterate - most of them women - there is great disparity in what has been, and has still to be achieved. At one end of the scale, women’s rights workers are still pressing for elementary education; at the other, for the removal of early ‘protective’ legislation which is now felt to be discriminatory because it denied women certain freedoms: for example, the right to do night work if they so choose. Nevertheless, despite the fact that the women’s movement has progressed unevenly and with varying success, women in general are emerging from ‘chatteldom’ and are beginning to take their place beside men as free and equal citizens.

   Wherever they have been granted the opportunity, women have demonstrated their ability to compete on equal terms with men. In time of war they have taken over from them in almost every sphere, building a record of distinguished service which has proved for all time that the power behind the throne is no less capable of ruling from it, and also that the hand rocking the cradle is equally at home manufacturing it.

 

The word “disparity” in the passage probably means _____ .

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