Section B
Directions: In this section, you are going to read a passage with ten statements attached to it. Each statement contains information given in one of the paragraphs. Identify the paragraph from which the information is derived. You may choose a paragraph more than once. Each paragraph is marked with a letter. Answer the questions by marking the corresponding letter on Answer Sheet 2.
The Future of Travel is Female
[A] Four years ago, a young woman, Shelly Kacergis, joined a women’s trip to Kenya with Global Heart Journeys, a travel agency in America. It turned out that the trip changed her life. Instead of following the typical tourist route, Kacergis choose to spend tons of time with locals, bonding with female tea farmers and villagers at schools, orphanages, and craft markets.
[B] Moved by the stories she heard in Kenya, she came back home to Atlanta and retired early from a career in banking to start a venture with one of her new friends. The program they launched, which aims to help women in Kenya gain financial independence as chicken farmers, now supports nearly 100 female farmers in that country.
[C] “The trip opened up a whole new world to me,” she says. Like many Western travelers, Kacergis felt transformed by African travel. But her experience speaks to the power of female-focused travel amid the continuing effects of the #MeToo movement and the increasing number of women touring the globe with purpose.
[D] Now, more women are booking women-only tours and finding life-changing experiences. “Woman-to-woman travel is one of the greatest unexplored frontiers,” asserts Global Heart Journeys founder Linda Higdon. About 17 years ago she traded her successful career as a classical pianist to work with women in various countries of the developing world. “It could entirely change the way we think about travel.”
[E] It seems certain to some people that, the future of women’s travel is, well, female—from CEOs pushing new boundaries to locals working hard in the field. This really becomes a growing trend worldwide. The truth is, women-focused travel companies have actually existed on the edges of the tourism industry since the late 1970s. And yet, when Wild Women Expeditions (or WWW, for short) got its start with all-female canoe trips in Ontario in 1991, “women-only travel was the laughing stock of the outdoor adventure travel world,” says Jennifer Haddow, the WWW’s current owner.
[F] Now the trend has seemed to hit the mainstream. Three years ago, REI Adventures rolled out a collection of women’s trips—all led by local female guides—as part of a campaign to help “level the playing field” outdoors. In 2018, tour outfitter MT Sobek celebrated its 50th anniversary with a new line of women’s-only adventures.