Although the human race is divided almost evenly between females and males, geographical differences do occur in the sex ratio: the ratio between men and women in a population (Figure 3.14). Slightly more boys than girls are born, but infant boys have slightly higher mortality rates than do infant girls. Recently settled areas typically have more males than females, as is evident in parts of Alaska, northern Canada, and tropical Australia. According to the U.S. Census Bureau, in 2010 there were 108 males for every 100 of Alaska’s female inhabitants. Some poverty-stricken parts of South Africa are as much as 59 percent female. Prolonged wars reduce the male population. And, in general, women tend to outlive men. The population pyramid is also useful in showing gender ratios. Note, for instance, the larger female populations in the upper bars for the United States in Figure 3.12.

Beyond such general patterns, gender often influences demographic traits in specific ways. Often gender roles—culturally specific notions of what it means to be a man and what it means to be a woman—are closely tied to how many children are produced by couples. In many cultures, women are considered more womanly when they produce many offspring. Butho eame token, men are seen as more manly when they father many children. Because the raising of children often falls to women, the spaces that many cultures associate with women tend to be the private family spaces of the home. Public spaces such as streets, plazas, and the workplace, by contrast, are often associated with men. Some cultures go so far as to restrict where women and men may and may not go, resulting in a distinctive geography of gender, as Figure 3.15 illustrates (take a look at Seeing Geography, page 133). Falling fertility levels that coincide with higher levels of education for women, however, have resulted in numerous challenges to these cultural ideas of male and female spaces. As more and more women enter the workplace, for instance, ideas of where women should and should not go slowly become modified. Clearly, gender is an important factor to consider in our exploration of population geography (see also Subject to Debate, page 105, and Patricia’s Notebook, page 110).

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