Like their male counterparts, women scientists are above average in terms of intelligence and creativity, but unlike men of science, their female counterparts have had to work against the grain of occupational stereotyping to enter a "man's world."
(A) their female counterparts have had to work
(B) their problem is working
(C) one thing they have had to do is work
(D) the handicap women of science have had is to work
(E) women of science have had to work

I am confused between A and E.

I know E sounds clear. But I chose A as it follows the same parallelism format as in first part of the sentence.

Kindly clarify

The first "their" refers to "female scientist".
The second "their" refers to "men of science".
Within a sentence, it is not good to have the same pronoun to refer to different things.

is this really an official gmatprep problem? it really, really doesn't seem like one.

the only grammatically viable choice here is (e), but i don't think the gmat would juxtapose "men of science" and "women of science" like that (not to mention that the situation would be made even worse by the proximity of "women scientists" and "their male counterparts" - that's just way too much stuff for one sentence).

choice (a) suffers from pronoun ambiguity, as pointed out by the poster above. it's worse than just your garden-variety pronoun ambiguity, though; at first glance, "their female counterparts" seems to be parallel to "their male counterparts" at the beginning of the sentence - in other words, the spurious parallelism makes it look as though the female scientists have not only male counterparts, but also female counterparts.
ugh.

to the original poster, please confirm that this is an official problem; i have a hard time believing it.

yes, ron. it is true that this is a GPREP problem. problem 11 - practice test 1.

Thanks ashish for confirming that its a GPrep Q

never have encountered this in my 19 re take(after un installing the .exe) in lat one yr or so.

so the OA-E?pls confirm

_________________
Many of the great achievements of the world were accomplished by tired and discouraged men who kept on working.

@ ashish

what was the OA according to that practice test?

_________________
Being well-dressed gives a feeling of inward tranquillity [that] religion is powerless to bestow.
C.F. Forbes

(E)

As a GMAT instructor in Madrid, I have seen over 500 sentence correction questions in GMATPrep, and I still encounter new ones from time to time. This is indeed a GMATPrep question.

Yes, it is Gprep problem, Just did this yesterday and got it wrong (Marked A), E is the OA.

yuck.

thanks for confirming.

_________________
Being well-dressed gives a feeling of inward tranquillity [that] religion is powerless to bestow.
C.F. Forbes

Why Present Perfect and not Present Simple was used?

you could use either, depending on the intended meaning.

the present tense would imply that this is an established fact -- true for women scientists in general -- that is unlikely to change anytime soon.
another example:
Lawyers have to work hard to become partners in their firms
--> suggests that this is true in general, and probably always will be true.

the present perfect suggests that the current group of women scientists have had to deal with this problem, but doesn't suggest that it's a general / timeless truth.
another example:
Lawyers have had to work hard to become partners in their firms
--> suggests that lawyers have had to do this until now, but carries no implication about whether this will continue to happen.

either meaning would make sense in this context, so, accordingly, the issue isn't tested.

_________________
Being well-dressed gives a feeling of inward tranquillity [that] religion is powerless to bestow.
C.F. Forbes

Ron, thank you.

you're welcome.

_________________
Being well-dressed gives a feeling of inward tranquillity [that] religion is powerless to bestow.
C.F. Forbes

Hi Instructors ,

I understand that this sentence can be solved on the basis of Like/Unlike that indicates parallelism.

But , when do we use the verb form
...have had.......