In 1987, the government banned doctors from revealing the sex of a fetus before birth. But experts say enforcement was lax because officials feared too many doctors would be caught.

In China in 2005, the ratio was 120 boys born for every 100 girls, according to the United Nations Population Fund. Vietnam reported a ratio of 110 boys to 100 girls last year. And although India recorded about 108 boys for every 100 girls in 2001

The Population Fund warned in an October report that the rampant tinkering with nature’s probabilities in Asia could eventually lead to increased sexual violence and trafficking of women as a generation of boys finds marriage prospects severely limited

“When I first joined the company in 1995, a woman was expected to quit her job once she got married; we called it a ‘resignation on a company suggestion,’” she said. Now, she said, many women stay after marriage and take a three-month break after giving birth before returning to work. “If someone suggests that a woman should quit after marriage, female workers in my company will take it as an insult and say so,” Ms. Shin said.

In 1990, the law guaranteeing men their family’s inheritance — a cornerstone of the Confucian system — was the first of the so-called family laws to fall; the rest would be dismantled over the next 15 years.

And last year, a study by the Korea Institute for Health and Social Affairs showed that of 5,400 married South Korean women younger than 45 who were surveyed, only 10 percent said they felt that they must have a son. That was down from 40 percent in 1991.

Exit polls in California found that 70 percent of black voters backed the ban. Slightly more than half of Latino voters, who made up almost 20 percent of voters, favored the ban, while 53 percent of whites opposed it.

The status of those marriages, among 17,000 same-sex unions performed in the state, was left in doubt by the vote

The cities of Los Angeles and San Francisco, and Santa Clara County, as well as several civil rights and gay rights groups, said on Wednesday that they would sue to block the ban.

Proposition 8 was one of the most expensive ballot measures ever waged, with combined spending of more than $75 million. Focus on the Family and other religious conservative groups contributed money to help pass the same-sex marriage measures in all three states.

Rouvoet benadrukte geen wettelijke maatregelen te eisen, maar een breed debat te willen.

Volgens Rouvoet staat er ‘een generatie op het spel’.

Een leefstijlcampagne is een landelijk uitvoeringsprogramma met lokale activiteiten (bijvoorbeeld voorlichting georganiseerd door een GGD) en een nationale massamediale component. Een campagne wordt ontwikkeld in samenwerking met de doelgroep (in dit geval jongeren die starten met relaties, intimiteit en seksualiteit).

In alle vier de onderzochte sectoren, de sport, de horeca, het bank- en verzekeringswezen en bij Defensie is vrijwel iedereen open over zijn of haar homoseksualiteit.

Dit zijn enkele conclusies uit de SCP-publicatie Gewoon Doen. Acceptatie van homoseksualiteit in Nederland

In Nederland hebben homoseksuelen tegenwoordig dezelfde rechten als heteroseksuelen. In 2001 is het burgerlijk huwelijk opengesteld voor paren van hetzelfde geslacht en kregen homoseksuele paren de wettelijke mogelijkheid om kinderen te adopteren.

In internationaal perspectief is Nederland samen met een aantal Scandinavische landen koploper waar het gaat om de acceptatie van homoseksualiteit. Het merendeel van de Nederlanders vindt het een goede zaak dat homoseksuelen dezelfde rechten hebben als heteroseksuelen

Opzichtige homoseksualiteit wordt niet gewaardeerd.

Uit onderzoek in 2000 bleek dat meer dan één op de tien Nederlanders het onaanvaardbaar vond als een zoon of dochter met iemand zou samenwonen van hetzelfde geslacht.

Veel homoseksuele mannen en vrouwen die werken in de horeca, de krijgsmacht en het bank- en verzekeringswezen, of die een teamsport beoefenen zoals hockey hebben te maken met zogenaamde grapjes en vervelende opmerkingen.

Sometimes it's the groom who is imported, as an honorable husband for a daughter. The imported groom is virtually powerless to oppose the union, especially with his family at home in Turkey pinning its entire hopes on his future.

It is not always easy to draw a clear line between an arranged marriage and a forced marriage.

Under the pretext of going on a vacation, Cem's parents lured their son to the Turkish Black Sea coast, where they took away his passport and pressured him until he signed the marriage contract.

Cem, a man in his mid-20s, had a similar experience, but because of his German girlfriend he refused to marry his cousin.

"I went to bed at 9:30 every night so I wouldn't have to sleep with my cousin. Or I went out," he says, "and fooled around with other girls." Women lack these freedoms. They are forced to sit at home with their in-laws, while the men can embark on minor escapades. And then there is another problem, says Berlin psychologist Erdogan: "Some men take out their frustration on their wives and become violent." The potential for such frustration is especially high among imported grooms, he says.

The researchers interviewed 2,000 adolescents aged 12 to 17 three times between 2001 and 2004.

She is paid US$3 for providing sex without using a condom and US$1 for sex with a condom.

According to 2008 research findings by the Community Health Department at the University of Malawi, up to 83 percent of prostitutes in Malawi are known to depend solely on sex work for their livelihoods and 95 percent of them have children. Sixty nine percent of the women who are involved in the sex trade are divorced.

unprotected sex, which is often practiced by sex workers, is among the key drivers of the HIV/AIDS epidemic in Malawi

lack of negotiation skills and assertiveness in ensuring safer sex through condom use also aggravates the spread of HIV and other sexually transmitted illnesses.

UNFPA has since funded the Family Planning Association of Malawi (FPAM) to work on reducing the transmission of HIV among the prostitutes by empowering them to practice safer sex, and by increasing the sex workers’ access to reproductive health, voluntary counseling and testing.

So far, the law in Malawi is silent on prostitution.

FPAM is engaging the sex workers by providing them with information, skills for negotiating safer sex (condom use) and alternative livelihood options, says Bessie Nkhwazi, the NGO’s district manager for Lilongwe.

FPAM, the government, NGOs and other service providers in Malawi realize that they cannot stop prostitution overnight, so their focus is largely on HIV prevention. And though FPAM and UNFPA create their workplans with the government, it’s mainly for appearances so they can say the government is somehow involved. Some of the money that FPAM receives comes from the National AIDS Commission, which is a government body, but the government is mainly helping to combat child prostitution through the deployment of child protection officers. The implementation of actual programs, especially those for older prostitutes, are really falling on the NGOs.