CAT 2021 Slot 3 — VARC Question 18
Directions for sentence exclusion: Five sentences are given below; out of these, four come together to form a coherent paragraph, but one sentence does not fit into the sequence. Choose the sentence that does not fit into the sequence.
Answer & solution
- A
A typical example is Wikipedia, where the overwhelming majority of contributors are male and so the available content is skewed to reflect their interests.
- B
Without diversity of thought and representation, society is left with a distorted picture of future options, which are likely to result in augmenting existing inequalities.
- C
Gross gender inequality in the technology sector is problematic, not only for the industry-wide marginalisation of women, but because technology designs embody the values of their makers.
While redressing unequal representation in the workplace is a step in the right direction, broader social change is needed to address the structural inequalities embedded within the current organisation of work and employment.
- E
If technology merely reflects the perspectives of the male stereotype, then new technologies are unlikely to accommodate the diverse social contexts within which they operate.
Easy
This is a sentence-exclusion (odd-one-out) set. Identify the precise theme the four coherent sentences share, then pick the sentence that drifts to a different, broader subject. Here the five candidates are labelled (a)–(e).
Pin the theme. (c) opens it: "Gross gender inequality in the technology sector is problematic... because technology designs embody the values of their makers." The thread is specifically about gender bias inside technology.
Build the chain. (e) extends (c): if technology only reflects the male stereotype, new technologies will not fit diverse social contexts. (a) gives a concrete instance — Wikipedia's male-skewed content. (b) concludes: without diversity of representation, society gets a distorted picture that augments inequalities. So c → e → a → b stays entirely on technology and gender.
Spot the misfit. (d) shifts to "broader social change... structural inequalities embedded within the current organisation of work and employment." It leaves technology behind for a general argument about the workplace and society — a wider theme the others never raise. It breaks the sequence.
The sentence that does not fit is option (d) — it abandons the technology-and-gender theme for broader social/workplace change.