介绍了男女差异主要在经济观念，财务状况，及存钱习惯以及相关社会问题。
可学习相关表达及观点，应用在讨论社会问题、男女差异及消费差别上的口语和写作话题中。
建议在做完听力题后再来学习文章哦。
听力原文：
OK, so we've been looking at the attitudes of various social and cultural groups towards the management of their personal finances -how important they feel it is to saw money, and what they save their money for.One aspect that we haven’t yet considered is gender. So if we consider genderissues we are basically asking whether men and women have different attitudestowards saving money, and whether they save money for different things.
Back in 1928 the British writer GeorgeBernard Shaw wrote in his intelligent Women’s
Guide to Socialism and Capitalism that ‘A man is supposed to understand politics, economics andfinance, and is therefore unwilling to accept essential instruction.’ Healso said ‘A woman, having fewer pretensions, is farmore willing to learn.’ Now, though these days people might question alol of the assumptions contained in those statements, recent research doessuggest that there are some quite fundamental differences between men and womenin their altitudes to economic matters.
Let’s look at what men and women actuallysave for. Research studies of women in North America have found that women are far more likely to save for their children’seducation and they are also more likely to save up in order to buy a house oneday. The same studies have found that men, on the other hand, tend to save fora car, which by the way takes a surprisingly largeamount of the household budget in North America. But the other main priority for men when saving money istheir retirement. When they’re earning, they're far more likely to put more aside for their old age than women are.
Now this is rather disturbing,because in fact the need for women to save fortheir old age is far greater than for men. Let sconsider this tor a moment, to start with, it is a fact that throughout theworld, women are likely to live many years longer thanmen, so they need money to support them during this time. Since womenare likely to be the ones left without a partner in old age, they may thereforehave to pay for nursing care, because they don't have a spouse to look afterthem. Furthermore, the high divorce rates inNorth America are creating a poverty cycle forwomen. It is the divorced women who will most often have to look after thechildren and thus they need more money to look after not just themselves, butothers.
So what can be done about this situation?The population in North America is likely to contain anincreasing number of elderly women. The research indicates that atpresent, for women it takes a crisis to makethem think about their future financial situation.
But of course, thisis the very worst time for anyone to make important decisions. Womentoday need to look ahead, think ahead-- not wait until they're under pressure.Even women in their early twenties need to think about pensions, for example,and with increasing numbers of women in professional positions there are signs that this is beginning to happen. Thenresearch also suggests that women avoid dealingeffectively with their economic situation because of a lack of confidence.The best way for them to overcome this is by gettingthemselves properly informed, so they are less dependent on otherpeople’s advice. A number of initiatives have been setup to help them do this. This College, for example, is one of theeducational institutions which offers night classes in MoneyManagement, and increasing numbers of women are enrollingon such courses. Here, they can be given advice on different ways ofsaving. Many women are unwilling to invest in stocksand shares, for instance, but these can be extremely profitable. It is usually advised that at least 70% ofa person s savings should be in low-risk investmentsbut for the rest, financial advisors often advise taking some well-informed risks. Initiatives such as this can givewomen the economic skills and knowledge they need for a comfortable, independentretirement.
The increasing proportion of elderly womenin the population is likely to have other economic consequences...
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