Pervasive Stereotypes Of Latin America

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When evaluating world regions, one must acknowledge that they don’t exist in and of themselves and that they must be compared in relation to other defined regions. A pervasive stereotype about Europe is that it is wealthy and developed in contrast to other defined regions such as Latin America or Africa. To evaluate the veracity of this stereotype, I was randomly assigned two countries, one from Latin America: Colombia, and another from Europe: Belgium, and was asked to compare and contrast their respective values and rankings derived from the United Nations Human Development and Gender Inequality Indices. After compiling and analyzing the values, it is evident that the European country far exceeds the Latin American country in HDI rank and …show more content…

Human development is about the real freedom ordinary people have to decide who to be, what to do, and how to live (About Human Development, n.d..).” When considering human development and inequality one must acknowledge that it is not solely reflected in measures of income or GDP. Two useful metrics in determining global inequality and human development are the United Nations Development Programme’s Human Development Index (HDI) and Gender Inequality index (GII). The Human Development Index is a numerical measure of life expectancy, educational attainment, and personal income, while the Gender Inequality Index GII) “reflects women’s disadvantage in three dimensions—reproductive health, empowerment and the labour market—for as many countries as data of reasonable quality allow. The index shows the loss in human development due to inequality between female and male achievements in these dimensions. It ranges from 0, which indicates that women and men fare equally, to 1, which indicates that women fare as poorly as possible in all measured dimensions” (Human Development Reports, n.d.). Gender equality plays a critical role in human development because it can enhance economic development, improve prospects for future generations and strengthen political and social …show more content…

In both countries the share of seats in parliament is under 50% and the participation in the labour force for peoples 15 and up is lower for females. Despite having more women with some secondary education in Colombia, an overwhelming majority of men still dominate the labour force. Belgium ranks 21 on the HDI while Colombia is ranked 98. Belgium has a Gender Inequality Index value of .068 and a rank of 9 while Colombia has value of .46 and a rank of 92. The low values for the GII indicators of Colombia also seem to correlate with a low value of human development. Even though Belgium ranks higher in development and lower in gender inequality, it is not fair to say that Europe is this bastion of equality and development. The majority of men hold seats in parliament and are comprised of the majority

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