The word "cleavages" is correct and usable in written English.
You can use it to describe fractures, splits, or divisions in a variety of contexts. For example, "The cleavages in public opinion on this issue are becoming increasingly evident."
The report, The 2015 General Election: A Voting System In Crisis, argues that, while the union narrowly survived last year's referendum on Scottish independence, it is under strain because the winner-takes-all system creates "artificial cleavages" which entrench division and run counter to the goals of national and regional unity.
They're all sitting beneath a framed portrait of Charles Darwin, that lavishly bearded Victorian paterfamilias, who seems to be eyeing their cleavages during the rest of the cabaret.
Women are variously told to "draw their veils over their bosoms and not to reveal their adornment save to their own husbands", or to "cover their bosoms with their veils and not show their finery" or to "draw their shawls over the cleavages in their clothes".
Perhaps it was because juries feel more sympathy for women driven to disfigure themselves to satisfy the male taste for generous cleavages than for smokers, who should have known better.
In many, including resource-rich ones like Nigeria, religious cleavages are widening.
Immigration and asylum have given rise to new and acute cultural cleavages; and it is precisely because the nations of Europe have failed to become genuine melting pots that so much of European politics now revolves around issues of multiculturalism.Mr Judt deals with grand and important themes.
They may also open up ethnic cleavages between the various southern groups, especially the Dinka and Nuer, which are the most prominent at the heart of the SPLM.There is also a worry that some neighbouring countries do not openly support the prospect of southern independence, even though they all signed up for it under the CPA in 2005.
The country's deep regional cleavages exacerbate the fragmentation of its party system, denying its presidents reliable legislative majorities, and blocking all efforts at economic reform.
Thanks to Mr Putin, some of Ukraine's old cleavages have weakened: in November a poll found that, for the first time, most Ukrainians back NATO membership.The reformers have ambition and zeal, if not always focus.
JUST as sovereign-debt worries have exposed the economic cleavages between north and south in a "two-speed Europe", a pair of public budgets released this week highlighted the imbalances between east and west in a two-speed Canada.
