<p>Can’t the two be used interchangeably?</p>
<p>Heres some definitions</p>
<p>Present perfect tense describes an action that happened at an indefinite time in the past or that began in the past and continues in the present.</p>
<p>EX. Women have voted in presidential elections since 1921.</p>
<p>Present perfect progressive tense describes an action that began in the past, continues in the present, and may continue into the future.</p>
<p>EX. The CEO has been considering a transfer to the state of Texas where profits would be larger.</p>
<p>Can I say “Women have been voting since 1921” and mean the same thing??</p>
<p>Thanks for the help</p>
<p>They can’t be interchangeable.
The only difference between these two is that present perfect progressive describes an action that has been taken and will still continue in the future.</p>
<p>For instance,
I play guitar. And I started in 2000. But I don’t play it anymore or I’m not sure if I will continue to play it in the future.
Under this circumstance, you’ll need to use perfect present like this, ’ I have playing the guitar since 2000.'</p>
<p>However, if I will continue to play it in the band i.e. will not stop playing in the future. Then you should use perfect present progressive like this, ’ I have been playing guitar since 2000.'</p>
<p>There are some other recognizable examples like learning lanuages, etc.</p>
<p>Walton12, there is a good discussion of this point at the web site
[ENGLISH</a> PAGE - Present Perfect Continuous](<a href=“http://www.englishpage.com/verbpage/presentperfectcontinuous.html]ENGLISH”>Present Perfect Continuous Tense | ENGLISH PAGE)
with a link to the present perfect and a set of exercises.</p>
<p>The present perfect progressive is called the present perfect continuous on the site, but it’s the same.</p>
<p>When you say that women have been voting in Presidential elections since 1921, this tends to emphasize that women have voted in multiple elections over the years. If women had voted in a single Presidential election, in 1924 (for example), it would still be correct to say that women have voted since 1921; but in that case, it would not be correct to say that women have been voting since 1921. So the two are not equivalent. In your example, the present perfect and the present perfect progressive are close enough in meaning that I doubt whether the question would appear on the SAT. But to see that the two tenses are not interchangeable, consider:
John has slept since January 2007.
vs.
John has been sleeping since January 2007.
In the latter case, he’s about 3/40ths of the way to a tie with Rip Van Winkle.</p>