The strong efforts to gain equality for women in the scientific workplace began to show results in the last quarter of the twentieth century; women have secured positions as research scientists and won recognition and promotion within their fields. Though the modern struggle for equality in scientific fields is the same in many ways as it was in the early part of the century, it is also different. The women who first began undertaking careers in science had little support from any part of the society in which they lived. This vanguard had to struggle alone against the social conditioning they had received as women members of that society and against the male-dominated scientific community.
Women scientific researchers made a seemingly auspicious beginning. In the first quarter of the twentieth century, some women scientists who engaged in research worked at the most prestigious institutes of the period and enjoyed more career mobility than women researchers would experience again for several decades. Florence Sabin, an anatomist at the Rockefeller Institute of Medical Research noted for her research on the lymphatic system, is one important example. This encouraging beginning, however, was not to be followed by other successes for many decades. To have maintained an active role in research institutions, women would have had to share some of the decision-making power: they needed to be part of hiring, promotion, and funding decisions. Unfortunately, these early women scientists were excluded from the power structure of scientific research. As a result, they found it almost impossible to provide opportunities for a younger set of female colleagues seeking employment in a research setting, to foster their productivity and facilitate their career mobility, and eventually to allow them access to the top ranks.
Even those with very high professional aspirations accepted subordinate status as assistants if doing so seemed necessary to gain access to research positions—and too often these were the only positions offered them in their chosen careers. Time and again they pulled back from offering any real resistance or challenge to the organizational structure that barred their advancement. But we must remember that these women scientists were few in number, their participation in decision, making positions was virtually nil, and their political clout was minimal. Thus they could easily become highly visible targets for elimination from the staff, especially if their behavior. was judged in the least imprudent.
Women's awareness that they were unequal colleagues, included in professional settings only on the sufferance of male colleagues, who held the positions of power, conflicted with their belief in meritocracy. They wanted to believe that achieving persons would be welcomed for their abilities and contributions. Yet they were surrounded by evidence to the contrary. An assistant professor of zoology observed that the men who were heads of departments were insistent on having other men in the department, they told her that women ought to be satisfied teaching high school. She relates that, during her ten years in the department, men were given at least six positions that she was qualified for and wanted desperately, but for which she was not even considered because she was a woman.
The primary purpose of the passage is to ______.

A. explain a situation
B. refute an argument
C. propose a change
D. honor an achievement