Cultural Differences & Regional Patterns - AP Human Geography

Generally men score higher than women in almost all areas of gender inequality around the world, although this is becoming less and less the case in the developed world. The only category in which women routinely score higher than men throughout the majority of the world is in life expectancy. Women, in almost all areas of the world, regardless of income levels and levels of education, outlive men.

Of these options South America scores by far the highest in relative gender empowerment. Europe, particularly Western Europe, tends to score the highest; closely followed by North America and Australasia. From there it is a rather precipitous drop off to South America and parts of East Asia. This is followed by another substantial drop to South Asia, Sub-Saharan Africa, North Africa, and the Middle East where gender empowerment is at its lowest.

In the waning months of World War I and the immediate aftermath of the conflict women achieved notable cultural and economic liberation. This continued into the 1920s, but was disrupted by the outbreak of the Great Depression in 1929. Unemployment rose dramatically in the early years of the depression and, in an attempt to ensure as much employment as possible for men, most states in America prohibited women from working outside the home.

In several of the world’s wealthiest countries in the world literacy rates are very close to one hundred percent for both men and women. But, this is the exception rather than the rule as far as the world is concerned. Most of the world suffers from a gender gap in literacy rates, this is generally most pronounced in countries that are extremely poor, although a few of the world’s poorest countries have less of a gender gap in literacy rates than some of the world’s wealthier countries. How can we explain this? Well, the answer is that some cultures have certain social standards and expectations for women. Or, more accurately, some cultures have more strict social standards and expectations for women. The Islamic world, particularly the Middle East and parts of North Africa, experiences some of the worst rates of female literacy in the world, particularly when compared to male literacy rates in the same region.

Due to its unique history of invasion, occupation, and population migration the Balkan region of Southern Europe contains a diverse mixture of ethnicities living in a relatively small piece of territory. For centuries the potentially violent tensions were contained by the powerful empires that occupied the region, but in the early 1990s, with the fall of Yugoslavia and the division of the Balkans into many smaller states, violence broke out on an unprecedented scale. In Sarajevo and Srebrenica neighbors of one ethnicity committed atrocities against neighbors of another ethnicity. The region is home to Serbs, Croats, Greeks, Albanians, Muslims, and Bosnians - many of whom have centuries long feelings of hatred and distrust towards one another. It is a volatile region of the world because of its ethnic diversity.

Although genocide can involve religious conflict, forced religious conversion, or spontaneous uprisings of ethnic violence, none of these answer choices is the best description of genocide. A “genocide” is a premeditated and deliberate attempt, usually sponsored by a government, to kill every individual from a particular ethnic group; to effectively eliminate that ethnic group’s presence from a region or from the planet. Famous examples of genocides include the Holocaust, the Rwandan Genocide, and the Armenian Genocide.

Shi’ite and Sunni are the two major denominations of Islam. They have existed almost as long as the religion itself and the initial discord (to make a complicated issue as simple as is possible) springs from disagreement over who inherited the right to guide the direction of the Islamic faith following the death of the Prophet Muhammad. Most Middle Eastern countries have a majority that practices one denomination and a minority that practices the other. This had led to a great deal of conflict in the past century (and indeed for the past several centuries).

The city of Jerusalem has long been a contentious city for people of the three great western monotheistic religions - Judaism, Christianity, and Islam. It is sacred to all three religions and countless people have died to try and ensure that their religion controls the city. When considering why it is sacred to the Islamic faith we need look no further than the Dome of the Rock, the site where according to Islam the Prophet Muhammad ascended to heaven.

Kashmir is a region of Northwestern India that is contended between Indians and Pakistanis. It has a large Muslim population, many of whom wish to be part of Pakistan (a majority Muslim country) rather than part of India (a majority Hindu) country. This dispute has led to many deaths in the years since the Great Partition of India in 1947.

The Basque people are mostly concentrated in northeastern Spain, with some overlap into southwestern France. Basque is a language, a culture, and an ethnic group distinct from the rest of Spain and many individuals within the nationality have long sought an independent nation-state.

Belfast is the capital city of Northern Ireland. Northern Ireland is part of the United Kingdom and is therefore controlled by the British government based in London. It has a Protestant majority and a Catholic minority, the Catholic minority wants Northern Ireland to be reunited with the rest of Ireland into one nation. These political and religious differences have manifested themselves in the previous hundred years in bloody conflict and acts of terrorism and government persecution.

The repeal of apartheid, or laws governing the physical separation of people of different races, occurred in the nation of South Africa in 1991.

Although the term “diaspora” can be used to describe any dispersion of people from their original homeland around the world, it is most commonly applied to the Jewish people. Before the creation of Israel, in 1947, almost all of the world’s Jews lived in communities in Europe, the Middle East, and the Americas, yet they retained their cultural and religious traditions and preserved their ethnic differences.

In raw numbers, the population of Latin Americans is growing the fastest. But, in terms of percentage the fastest growing ethnicity is Asian Americans. The number of Asian Americans grows by about three percent each year, while the number of Latin Americans grows by about two percent.

Unlike most Western European countries the influence of religious culture on America has remained fairly powerful and consistent in the last two decades, so we can rule out these two answer choices. The United States has seen a considerable increase in its ethnic diversity in the last two decades. In the 1990s immigration laws were fairly lenient and a great number of immigrants arrived from East Asia, South Asia, and Latin America. These new arrivals have had children in far greater numbers than the majority white population, contributing to a considerable increase in ethnic diversity in the United States.

Of these countries by far the most immigrants arrive from Mexico, mostly into the southwest of the United States although Mexican-Americans are well dispersed around much of the United States. As of 2013, immigrants from Mexico were living in the United States, which accounted for over of all immigrants living in America.

A “multinational state” is a state that is comprised of more than one nationality. More specifically it is a state in which those various nationalities agree to coexist as one political unit for mutual benefit. In the United Kingdom the English, the Scottish, the Welsh, and the Northern Irish are all distinct nationalities with a long history who have peacefully (for the most part) coexisted for a long time.

A “ghetto” is an area of a city in which people of an ethnic minority are confined either by official government policy or by economic and social obstacles that make it difficult for people of that ethnicity to exist outside of the ghetto. It has been a common experience of African-Americans in the United States since the end of the Civil War.

Africa, home to over a thousand languages, has the most languages out of any continent. Many Africans speak two or more languages.