【单选题】

The traditional belief that a woman’s place is in the home and that a woman ought not to go out to work can hardly be reasonably maintained (维持) in present conditions (条件). It is said that it is a woman’s task to care for the children, but families today tend to(倾向于) be small and with a year or two between children. Thus a woman’s whole period of child-bearing may be within five years and her role as chief educator of her children soon stops. Thus, even if we agree that a woman should stay at home to look after her children before they are of school age, for many women, this period would extend (延续) only for about ten years.

It might be argued (争议) that the house-proud woman would still find plenty to do about the home. That may be so, but it is certainly no longer necessary for a woman to spend her whole life cooking, cleaning, mending and sewing. Washing machines take the drudgery (单调乏味的工作) out of laundry, the latest models being entirely automatic (自动化的) and able to wash and dry a large quantity of clothes in a few minutes. Refrigerators (冰箱) have made it possible to store food for long periods. Shopping, instead of being a daily task, can be completed in one day a week.
Apart from women’s own happiness, the needs of the community must be considereD、Modern society cannot do well without the contribution (贡献) that women can make in the professions and other kinds of work. There is a serious shortage(短缺) of nurses and teachers. It is extremely wasteful to give years of training at public expense only to have the qualified teacher or nurse marry after a year or two and he lost forever to her profession. The training, it is true, will help her in her duties as a mother, but if she continued to work, her service would be more widely useful. Many factories and shops, too, are largely staffed(任职) by women, many of them marrieD、While here the question of training is not so important, industry and trade would be seriously short of staff if married women did not work.
According to the author, modern society______.A．can operate just as well even without women’s participation
B．had been greatly hampered in its development by the shortage of women nurses and women teachers
C．cannot operate properly without the contribution of women
D．will be seriously affected by the continuing shortage of working women in heavy industries and international trade