Английский язык

Text 5. Read and translate the text.

Glass ceiling still firmly in place for Israeli women

Official reports find vast female underrepresentation in senior government positions, despite more education

Reports released ahead of International Women’s Day, which falls on Saturday, painted a grim picture of gender inequality in Israel, revealing gross disparities not only in men and women’s wages but also in their representation in senior positions in government and academia.
The reports, which were released on Tuesday by the State Comptroller’s Office and the Central Bureau of Statistics and based on data collected throughout 2012, showed the “glass ceiling” still very much in place for Israeli women and lambasted the government for perpetuating the discrimination rather than working to promote equal representation.
CBS data showed that the mean monthly wage for women in Israel was NIS (New Israeli Shekel) 7,244, compared to 10,953 for men — a 34 percent difference. Men were also found to receive higher hourly wages than women, especially in the 45-54 age group. Slightly less than 60 percent of women were said to be employed, as opposed to just under 70 percent of men.
The disparity was made more acute by the fact that Israeli women were found to be more educated than their male counterparts, with an average of 14.2 years of education compared to 13.8 for men. Women were found to be ahead of men in various areas related to education, such as attaining a high school diploma, meeting university admission criteria and pursuing a college education.
Women were reported to account for 67.3 percent of the bottom socioeconomic decile of Israeli society, and only 23.3 of the topmost decile.
State Comptroller Yosef Shapira’s report, meanwhile, found that out of 68 directors general of government-owned corporations appointed in 2012, none were women. The present government, on the other hand, has prided itself in appointing six women as directors of government ministries.
Six women — and twenty-four men.
The presence of women in senior management positions in government-affiliated industries was likewise found to be minuscule, with no female representation in the higher echelons of the defense and aerospace industries, and just one woman in the senior management of Israeli defense technology firm Raphael.
The data further revealed that 17 percent, or less than one-fifth, of directors of top firms were women, with only two women serving on the boards of directors of Israel’s 22 biggest firms.
In academia, the situation was said to be worse, with women accounting for a mere 15 percent of lecturers with tenure.
Describing Israeli academia as having a “classic pyramid structure,” although there was full equality on the doctoral level, with women accounting for about 50 percent of doctoral students, on the higher rungs, the disparity was apparent.
Of those who had already qualified for a doctoral degree and were applying for a more senior position, 10,600 candidates were found to be men, while 8,100 were women — 44 percent.
Among the causes of the inequality, the report cited the meager presence of women on the committees charged with appointing lecturers and distributing research funding.
A lack of suitable female candidates was not the problem.
“Even if the number of female students increases, the ‘glass ceiling’ will not disappear on its own,” Shapira said. “Deliberate intervention is required to make it smaller.”
Israel’s police force was said to be among the most guilty of gender inequality, with women accounting for less than a quarter of the 27,500-strong force. The report also found that there were very few female police officers serving in senior commanding roles — among the 60 police station commanders in the country, only one was a woman.
“Promotions are made based on the candidates’ qualifications, regardless of their gender,” Maariv quoted Danino as saying in response to the data. ”There is nothing blocking women from being promoted to senior positions in the police force.”
Shapira, for his part, remained unconvinced by Danino’s explanation.
“One can assume that in the Israeli police force, which employs about 6,000 women, there are women who possess the qualifications required to fill a variety of senior roles,” he said.
    He added that the findings pointed to “a deeply-rooted culture of gender discrimination” in the higher echelons of the Israel Police, which he said remained “blind to the significant setbacks preventing women from being promoted to higher positions.”
Though the report was based on data collected in 2012, Shapira did not spare the current government, criticizing it for perpetuating gender inequality and not making enough efforts to appoint women as civil servants.
Commenting on the findings, he said, “It isn’t deliberate discrimination, but rather social norms which have taken root and are fed by a sort of unconscious acceptance, which is widespread even among the women themselves and turns discrimination into an ever-present social reality.


Exercise I. Give Russian equivalents to the following expressions.

gender inequality                                       deliberate discrimination
to perpetuate the discrimination                ever-present social reality
the socioeconomic decile of Israeli society  
classic pyramid structure            
government-owned corporations  
to be blind to the significant setbacks

Exercise  II. Give English equivalents to the following expressions.

критиковать правительство
военная техника
руководящие круги израильской полиции
тщательно спланированное вмешательство
руководящие должности в научном сообществе
способствовать паритетному представительству
назначать женщин на должности государственных служащих
сохранить навеки гендерное неравенство

Exercise III. Suggest your translation.

1. Reports painted a grim picture of gender inequality in Israel, revealing gross disparities not only in men and women’s wages but also in their representation in senior positions in government and academia.
2. Among the causes of the inequality are the meager presence of women on the committees charged with appointing lecturers and distributing research funding.
3. The disparity was made more acute by the fact that Israeli women were found to be more educated than their male counterparts.
4. Israel’s police force was said to be among the most guilty of gender inequality.
5. The present government has prided itself in appointing six women as directors of government ministries.
6. The Israel Police remained blind to the significant setbacks preventing women from being promoted to higher positions.
7. Women were reported to account for 67.3 percent of the bottom socioeconomic decile of Israeli society, and only 23.3 of the topmost decile.
8. Among the causes of the inequality is the meager presence of women on the committees charged with appointing lecturers and distributing research funding.

Exercise IV. Translate the following sentences from Russian into English.

1. Можно предположить, что в полиции Израиля, в которой работают почти 6000 женщин, есть достаточно квалифицированные женщины для разных руководящих должностей.
2. Сообщалось, что в научном сообществе ситуация хуже, так как только 15 процентов женщин имеют постоянную работу преподавателем или профессором в университете.
3. Даже если увеличится количество девушек-студентов, проблема «стеклянного потолка» не исчезнет сама по себе.
4. Основанием продвижения по службе является квалификация сотрудника, а не его гендерная принадлежность.
5. На сегодняшний день в полиции Израиля достаточно квалифицированных женщин, способных занять руководящие должности.
6. Полученные данные выявили глубоко уходящую корнями в прошлое историю гендерной дискриминации на высших руководящих постах в полиции Израиля.





























Text 8. Read and translate the text.

Positive intelligence


In July 2010 Burt’s Bees, a personal-care products company, was undergoing enormous change as it began a global expansion into 19 new countries. In this kind of high-pressure situation, many leaders pester their deputies with frequent meetings or flood their in-boxes with urgent demands. In doing so, managers jack up everyone’s anxiety level, which activates the portion of the brain that processes threats and steals resources from the prefrontal cortex, which is responsible for effective problem solving.
Burt’s Bees’s then-CEO, John Replogle, took a different tack. Each day, he’d send out an e-mail praising a team member for work related to the global rollout. He’d interrupt his own presentations on the launch to remind his managers to talk with their teams about the company’s values. He asked me to facilitate a three –hour session with employees on happiness in the midst of the expansion effort. As one member of the senior team told me a year later, Replogle’s emphasis on fostering positive leadership kept his managers engaged and cohesive as they successfully made the transition to a global company.
That outcome shouldn’t surprise us. Research shows that when people work with a positive mindset, performance on nearly every level – productivity, creativity, engagement – improves. Yet happiness is perhaps the most misunderstood driver of performance. For one, most people believe that success precedes happiness. “Once get a promotion, I’ll be happy”, they think. “Once I hit my sales target, I’ll feel great”. But because success is a moving target – as soon as you hit your target, you raise it again – the happiness that results from success is fleeting.
In fact, it works the other way around: People who cultivate a positive mind-set perform better in the face of challenge. I call this the “happiness advantage” – every business outcome shows improvement when the brain is positive. I’ve observed this effect in my role as a researcher and lecturer in 48 countries on the connection between employee happiness and success. And I’m not alone: In a meta-analysis of 225 academic studies, researchers found strong evidence of directional causality between life satisfaction and successful business outcomes.
Another common misconception is that our genetics, our environment, or a combination of the two determines how happy we are. To be sure, both factors have an impact. But one’s general sense of well-being is surprisingly malleable. The habits you cultivate, the way you interact with coworkers, how you think about stress – all these can be managed to increase your happiness and your chances of success.

Develop New Habits

Training your brain to be positive is not so different from training your muscles at the gym. Recent research on neuroplasticity – the ability of the brain to change even in adulthood – reveals that as you develop new habits, you rewire the brain.
Engaging in one brief positive exercise every day for as little as three weeks can have a lasting impact, my research suggests. For instance, in December 2008, just before the worst tax season in decades, I worked with tax managers at KPMG in New York and New Jersey to see if I could help them become happier. (I am an optimistic person, clearly). I asked them to choose one of five activities that correlate with positive change:
•    Jot down three things they were grateful for.
•    Write a positive message to someone in their social support network.
•    Meditate at their desk for two minutes.
•    Exercise for 10 minutes.
•    Take two minutes to describe in a journal the most meaningful experience of the past 24 hours.
The participants performed their activity every day for three weeks. Several days after the training concluded, we evaluated both the participants and a control group to determine their general sense of well-being. How engaged were they? Were they depressed? On every metric, the experimental group’s scores were significantly higher than the control group’s. When we tasted both groups again, four months later, the experimental group still showed significantly higher scores in optimism and life satisfaction. Happiness had become habitual.

Help Your Coworkers

Of the five activities described above, the most effective may be engaging positively with people in your social support network. Strong social support correlates with an astonishing number of desirable outcomes. The research shows that high levels of social support predict longevity as reliably as regular exercise does, and low social support is as damaging as high blood pressure.
The benefits of social support are not just physical. In a study of 1,648 students at Harvard that I conducted, we found that social support was the greatest predictor of happiness during periods of high stress. On follow-on research I found that even more important to sustained happiness and engagement was the amount of social support the students provided. For example, how often does a student help others when they are overwhelmed with work? How often does he initiate social interactions on the job? Social support providers – people who picked up slack for others, invited coworkers to lunch, and organized office activities – were not only 10 times more likely to be engaged at work than those who kept to themselves; they were 40% more likely to get a promotion.

Change Your Relationship with Stress

Stress is another central factor contributing to people’s happiness at work. Many companies offer training on how to mitigate stress, focusing on its negative health effects.
It’s important to remember that stress has an upside. Stress is not just an obstacle to growth; it can be the fuel for it. Your attitude toward stress can dramatically change how it affects you.
Stress is an inevitable part of work. The next time you’re feeling overwhelmed, try this exercise: Make a list of the stresses you’re under. Place them into two groups– the ones you can control and those you can’t (the stock market, housing prices). Choose one stress that you can control and come up with a small, concrete step you can take to reduce it. In this way you can nudge your brain back to a positive – and productive – mind-set.
It’s clear that increasing your happiness improves your chances of success. Developing new habits, nurturing your coworkers, and thinking positively about stress are good ways to start.


Exercise I. Give Russian equivalents to the following expressions.

to undergo enormous change    successful business outcome
sense of well-being        in the face of challenge
to jack up one’s anxiety level    to nurture coworkers
to become habitual        to jot down

Exercise II. Give English equivalents to the following expressions.

Позитивный настрой
Долголетие
Доказательство непосредственной связи между…
Формировать привычки
Препятствие росту
Неотъемлемая часть работы
Снять стресс
Тип мышления

Exercise III. Suggest your translation.

1. When people work with a positive mindset productivity, creativity, creativity improves.
2. Most people believe that success precedes happiness.
3. Stress is not just an obstacle to growth, it can be the fuel for it.
4. Researchers found strong evidence of directional causality between life satisfaction and successful business outcomes.
5. The habits you cultivate, the way you interact with coworkers, how you think about stress – all these can be managed to increase your happiness and your chances of success.
6. As you develop new habits, you rewire the brain.
7. Strong social support correlates with an astonishing number of desirable outcomes.
8. Many companies offer training on how to mitigate stress, focusing on its negative health effects.

Exercise IV. Translate the following sentences into English.

1. В компании происходят серьезные изменения в связи с ее расширением на мировом рынке.
2. Повышая уровень беспокойства сотрудников, руководители тем самым истощали ресурсы той части головного мозга, которая отвечает за эффективное решение проблем.
3. Исследователи обнаружили очевидную зависимость между удовлетворенностью жизнью и успехами в работе.
4. Позитивное общение с коллегами, социальная поддержка имеют важные преимущества для состояния устойчивого счастья.
5. Еще одним заблуждением является то, что наша генетика, окружение или их комбинация определяют, насколько мы счастливы.
6. Многие компании предлагают курс обучения по борьбе со стрессом, фокусируясь на его негативном влиянии на здоровье.