And Never The Twain...

"Their potential interest in younger women is not likely [to be] converted into sexual activity."
"Sure, some older men have a strong preference for clearly younger women, but most tend to also find older women attractive."
"An interesting finding is that as men age, they become less picky about age. They report an interest in both younger and older women."

"Natural selection has probably shaped men’s sexual strategies to include a particular interest in highly fertile, young women. But because women, in many cases, are more picky with respect to sexual partners, most men could not find a partner unless their sexual motivation would be more inclusive."

"Humans tend to have long-lasting sexual relationships and this would not be possible if all men were [only] interested in young women."

"We look for many different characteristics when choosing a partner, and age is just one of them."

"The findings might help relax the belief that men are mainly interested in young women."

Jan Antfolk, Abo Akademi University, Turku, Finland 

Do the conclusions of a study on an aspect of human behaviour shaped by biology, environment, heritage and culture readily transfer to other geographical jurisdictions whose social culture might be quite different? To some extent it would, when the major thrust of the study has been to derive an opinion from synthesizing observable results and responses from a demographic, since though customs vary from geography to geography, basic human instincts tend to coalesce around some fundamental realities.

A primitive reality is that nature equipped men to hunt out nubile young women to carry their seed, on the premise that the most promising childbearing years would be likelier to produce offspring that were healthier and likelier to survive, than those produced by an aging female, thus promoting the  survival of the genetic blueprint of the man imprinted to ensure he would gravitate to the most viable solution for his predicament, that of survival; of his very particular genetic inheritance.


Many hundreds of thousands of years may separate us from our progenitors, the original human strain within which nature implanted that primal urge, but nature's organisms while developing through evolutionary strides in many areas, have never abandoned any of the facets of human interaction associated with survival. All of us, men and women, admire youth, its presence, liveliness, beauty and promise for the future. Men in particular are drawn to the freshness and sensuous attraction of youth; in their deep subconscious it equates with fecundity.

Young women with firm limbs and skin, curvaceous and dewy, capture the attention of most men as objects both of admiration and desire. Men have always been attracted to, and respond to the allure of younger women as possible sexual partners; the commonplace scenario of a man leaving his aging wife for a much younger women is no urban legend. But men are also practical and at some level for many men if what they desire is unattainable, they will settle for what they can attain.

What they can attain, a woman whose age is more reflective of their own, makes for a more comfortable lifestyle fit. There is nothing enjoyable about being married to someone decades younger then yourself who gravitates to a style of life more suited to the young than a man settled into his 50s and 60s is likely to appreciate. And from the younger woman's perspective, being saddled with an older man has its very particular detriments ranging from physical attraction to physical decline in all its permutations.

The Finnish study, the results of which was published in the journal Evolutionary Psychology, included over 2,500 people and concluded that if an older man remains inflexible about his inclination to date younger women, he may find himself dating no one. The urge for companionship, particularly when one ages, comes in direct competition with the urge to procreate; not that older men want to procreate; rather their urge is to go through the motions; sterile sex.

Once an older man fully understands the playing field he was once familiar with has changed; that he is no longer sexually attractive as a physical specimen, with advanced age to the younger women he pursues, he realizes that women as young as his daughter, while appealingly attractive, are also inappropriate as lifestyle companion choices. In his 50s, a transference of interest takes place, toward women whose age and interests in life more closely mirror his own.

"If you are with someone 20 years younger, they've probably got a different life experience. When you get to a certain age, you start to creak at the seams. If you're dating someone younger, there well may be a mismatch in your pace of life", observed 68-year-old Jonathan. "After a 20-year relationship I began online dating. I was talking to girls in their 20s because those were the ones I felt most attracted to. But none seemed interested. All they wanted to do was send me titillating pictures of themselves. When I tried to take things further, they ghosted me. I hadn't expected them to be so immature", he said.

The question there might more logically be who was the more immature? Close to 70 he had little interest in women in their 50s, or 60s, so how mature is that?

Adults in the study group were between the ages of 18 and 50, some single, some in long-term relationships, most were heterosexual and about a third of the participants identified as bisexual or homosexual, surprisingly. All ventured an age range they considered appropriate for a sex partner and were queried about the past five years of their sexual activities. In general young men preferred women their own age. But were open to women substantially younger.

The average age of heterosexual men in the study was 37, with most considering sex with women around 21 in contrast to heterosexual women at 35, with their youngest partner choice being 27. It seems as women age they place greater limits on how young a man they are willing to have sex with; the definition of "too young" increased by about four months for each year a woman gained in age.
 Age-appropriate preferences evolved within the male grouping as well, but not quite to the extent seen with women's. As they aged, their youngest age limit increased each year by two months on average. In the final analysis, most of the men it turned out, were having sex with women closer to their own age. Their 'druthers, in preferring younger women were more fantasy than fact.

But of course these findings reflected Finnish society and culture; how the findings translate elsewhere around the world is debatable.

BEVERLY HILLS, CA - AUGUST 07: Playboy founder Hugh Hefner (L) and TV personality Crystal Harris attend the Beverly Hills City Council and Playboy Enterprises, Inc.'s celebration of the return of Playboy headquarters to Beverly Hills on August 7, 2012 in Beverly Hills, California. (Photo by David Livingston/Getty Images)

“You DON'T Gotta Eat Here...especially not twice!”

SOOO I convinced my family to give it a try for my sister's 18th birthday dinner. The 8 of us were seated and a highchair was provided for my 16-month-old son. The highchair was F-I-L-T-H-Y! We hadn't been greeted by our waitress yet so we asked a waiter from another section to come clean or replace the chair. He brought a new chair...that just as dirty lol. My mom politely asked that he wipe it down with a cloth. Thank you, kind sir, for doing so. We were greeted by our waitress, who was, yup...the same darn waitress my husband and I had a week prior! I thought, maybe she was just having a bad night last Friday as well....I thought wrong. Drink orders were taken...it was10 minutes before they made it to the table and she forgot 2 of them...another 5 minutes for those. Then we sat...and we waited....and glasses got empty and orders weren't taken. I'm not exaggerating when I say that there was a whole 1/2 hour period when our waitress didn't come by our table at all! When she was finally ready to take our food orders, we skipped the appetizers and went straight for main courses. Everyone ordered something different - pulled pork, ribs, brisket, chicken...classic Southern fare. My son has an allergy so I asked the waitress to consult with the chef about the chicken fingers. She proceeded to argue with me about whether or not there may be dairy in them. Rather than just ask the chef herself; very unprofessional. While most restaurants are not able to guarantee an allergen-free environment, all of them ar able to provide a list of ingredients. That is all I wanted...but I got attitude instead. I was not the only one to get attitude either, my dad asked for a pitcher of ice tea for the table and she replied (and I quote) "Just hold on a sec" as she waved her finger at him! The food finally came and 3 out of 8orders were wrong...either the wrong bbq sauce, wrong side dishes (like beans instead of cornbread). There was no butter or ketchup on the table, replacements for incorrect orders took WAY too long...and overall there were alot of LONG faces at the table. But atleast there was live entertainment - a drunk (yes DRUNK) woman wearing a D&S t-shirt, stumbling around the restaurant...O-M-G!

D_S_Southern_Comfort_BBQ-Ottawa_Ontario.html# Review by J_FoodLover_11

So really, after a rant like that, the second displeasured review written of the same food establishment, why on Earth would anyone return only to find themselves in the very same situation over again? Glutton for punishment? Willing to give an erring server and food establishment a second chance? Who knows! Spelling and syntax errors aside, it made for an amusing read, if somewhat puzzling for the stated reason that anyone who would return to a restaurant that so spectacularly failed their expectations first time around must either have a short memory or couldn't be bothered finding an alternative.

To that anyone sensible might respond indeed OMG!

But restaurateurs themselves appear to be in a state of revolt in response to customers' entitled expectations, it seems. Consider that dentists and doctors and other service providers of health aid will charge clients who fail to live up to their obligations to appear on schedule for appointments, but what recourse do restaurants have when, having booked a table well in advance, those scheduling the reservation fail to appear and the restaurant is left in the lurch? Which explains why many no longer take reservations. Patrons must appear and wait to be seated.

And those diners who think they can peruse a menu and, finding nothing they deem attractive enough to order on it, persuadingly convince the server and the chef to accommodate them by providing an alternative plate, while succeeding in the past, are no longer capable of doing so. It's not necessarily that the chef is rigidly immovable in declining to provide anything not advertised, but that this kind of accommodation transcends by a good degree the customary offering of a range of dishes appealing to diners yet expecting the chef to focus on their particular taste as a polite obligation to commerce.

And is it not rather unreasonable when a customer, dining alone, finds the table they've been escorted to uncongenial to their seating preference, and insists instead in being seated at a customer-empty table set for eight? Where once a restaurant might graciously have opted to move that diner to the eight-seating table, they've now opted-out. It seems the profit margin is not that great to accommodate the need to change a tablecloth on a large table that has serviced one picky diner.

The moral of this story might lie in the morale that sagged with frustration over bending into pretzels to satisfy a clientele for whom no efforts at accommodation are quite sufficient. And now restaurateurs appear to be declaring by their unwillingness to continue being manipulated by fastidiously entitled diners whose wishes go beyond inconveniencing a business, that what you see is what you get. 

The food establishment is in the business to make a profit. And while servicing the customer's wishes can be performed to a degree, it has its limits. And if the restaurant now rejects payment by credit card that too obviously is a rejection of a taken-for-granted payment process that it deems inconvenient and costly to itself. That, and the assertive declaration that separate bills for friends sharing a table and ordering separately, is entirely too much trouble; one bill is to suffice, and use a little math to figure out who owes what. 

Singapore, food court, Shoppers in Marina   123RF

Women's Lot In India

"Although gender-based discrimination of female children is pervasive in developing countries, India is one of the worst culprits. Female discrimination, which starts in the womb, continues throughout women's lives."
"A survey by the Thomas Reuters Foundation found that India is the fourth most dangerous place in the world for women."
Cesar Chelala, M.D., Ph.D., global public health consultant

Hurt: Sonia (pictured) was travelling home with her friend Prajuna when two truck drivers, who had befriended their families, offered them a lift home. But instead of taking them back, they raped the schoolgirls, leaving them to walk home half-naked and bleeding

Horrific gang rapes in India are common. Girls and women of the lower caste are generally the target and they are often left for dead or murdered, since particularly in more remote rural areas the law is soft on men who commit these atrocities, and women and girls who survive their assaults and attempt to lodge official complaints are often ignored. The women are viewed by their society as having been defiled, and though they are the victims they are seen as having brought dishonour to their families.

Family members often attempt to persuade survivors of rape and violence that it would be best not to say or do anything to bring further attention to their plight. Their future role in their society is all but obliterated; what they suffered will have made them indeed untouchable. But it is all women who are vulnerable to sexual assault in a country where too many men seem to feel it is their right to exploit and harm women as easy prey that few bother to question.

Criminal sexual assault has countless victims, and the plight of the unprotected is dreadful, but sexual assault happens anywhere in the country, it is not exclusive to those whom custom and culture linked to fundamentalist religious values are seen as game for the upper classes. Genera discrimination in India slams up hard against an emerging economy whose rapid technological development equates with more and better employment opportunities, at least for the educated.

But from groping on crowded public transit to shouted lewd suggestions, to being stalked, to facing an attacker who knows he will not face insurmountable punishment, women live daily lives of public torment and fear. 

Twelve-year-old Pinky had gone to see a wedding procession when a female neighbour invited her to her home. There, she gagged Pinky and handed her over to her brother-in-law, who raped the young girl. They then threatened Pinky to remain silent, but she found the courage to tell her parents, who reported it to police. Smita hopes telling stories like this one will encourage others to speak out

Researchers with the medical journal The Lancet have given an estimate of over a half-million females aborted as a result of sex selection since the introduction of ultrasound. Now that prenatal sex identification makes it easier for prospective parents to know what gender a woman is carrying, there are fewer incidents of post-birth deaths among girl babies, but it does still occur. Ultrasound makes feticide more convenient as a disposal method of an  unwanted girl child.

In Indian culture traditionally inheritance rights are with a male offspring. And traditionally it was male children who were expected to look after their aging parents. Girls, once they married, were absorbed into another family. Dowries, though now illegal are a condition of marriage whereby the bride's family must give to the groom goods and possessions that are to be his, not his new wife's, in the process enriching him and in no sense serving the interests of the bride's parents other than to reduce their resources while honouring custom.

Selective abortions may be illegal in India, just as discrimination against the Dalit, the lowest class (formerly known as 'untouchables') in the discriminatory caste system is illegal, but it carries on nevertheless. The ancient custom of a wife dying on the funeral pyre of her husband is also illegal and though no longer commonly practised, it does take place in remote areas still. Indian widows have no rights, and they are lost souls, consigned to live in poverty and isolation, cast from their families.

Thousands of widows have been making their way to one particular town in the north of India. Cast out by their families, or simply alone in the world, some travel hundreds of miles to get there, and nobody quite knows why

Acid-throwing is a particularly cruel and sinister punishment visited on girls and women of any class or religion. It is cruelly disfiguring if it doesn't kill the victim. She will live the rest of her life advertising by her appearance the dreadful punishment meted out to her for defying cultural normatives. Up to 70 percent of married women aged fifteen to 49 in India have been victims of beatings or coerced sex, according to the United Nations Population fund.

Domestic violence related to dowries can lead to desperation and suicide, and murder is not at all uncommon. When a girl or young woman enters the household of her husband she can also become no better than an indentured servant. Because of a shortage of marriageable Indian girls and women resulting from sex selection abortions, a trafficking of women has been on the increase. Women are sold as brides in areas of India where shortages are particularly acute.

Afghanistan
From an early age, life’s a struggle for Afghan girls, with 87 percent left illiterate and 70-80 percent forced into marriages (54% of girls aged between 15-19 are married, according to UNICEF).  Having a family can be an ordeal in itself: with a maternal mortality ratio of 400 in 100,000 (vs 8 for the UK), and cases of domestic violence high. Afghanistan’s courts make it notoriously difficult to prosecute the latter too, as family testimony is banned.
The Democratic Republic of Congo
Congo has one of the worst records of gender based violence (GBV), with the American Journal of Public Health estimating that 1,150 women are raped every day – equating to 420,000 a year. Health outcomes are inadequate for women too, with 57 percent of pregnant women reported to be anaemic.
Pakistan
Many of Pakistan’s cultural and religious practices pose a huge threat to women, particularly child and forced marriage, acid attacks and punishment by stoning. According to Pakistan’s Human Rights Commission, more than 1,000 girls and women are victims of ‘honour killings’ each year, and 90 percent face domestic violence.
India
Despite having the world’s largest democracy, famous examples of gang rape and hangings demonstrate what a perilous place India can be for women. Researchers estimate that there have been 50 million cases of female infanticide or foeticide over the last three decades. And even if you get to live, child marriage and high levels of trafficking still cast a shadow over the safety of females.
Somalia
High maternal mortality, rape, female genital mutilation (FGM) and child marriage are just every day concerns for a woman living in Somalia, a country typified by its lack of law and order. 95 percent of Somalia’s female inhabitants face FGM, usually around the ages of four to 11, and in their child-rearing years, only nine percent can expect to give birth in a health facility.
Colombia
GBV in Colombia is alarmingly high – in 2010, The National Institute for Legal Medicine and Forensic Science reported 45,000 cases of domestic violence against women. Still, few organised systems exist to help women and girls needing post-violence care, meaning that many do not receive appropriate medical treatment. To add insult to injury, it’s rare for GBV perpetrators to be brought to justice.
Egypt
The systematic sexual harassment of women and girls throughout Egypt is something that even casual visitors may have experienced. GBV and harassment increased in the wake of the Egyptian Revolution of 2011. In January, Egyptian groups reported that there were 19 cases of mob sexual assaults, with one victim raped with a bladed weapon. One of Egypt’s main failings when it comes to supporting women is its judicial system, which does not criminalise domestic violence, and ignores their rights when it comes to marriage, divorce, child custody and inheritance.
Kenya
Despite carrying out the majority of the country’s agricultural work, Kenya’s female inhabitants only receive a small part of the income they generate. In fact, just 29 percent of those earning a formal wage throughout the country are women. Educational prospects for girls are dreadful, as they are taught at an inferior level to their counterparts. Even worse, HIV infection rates are more prevalent among the female populace – partly due to the lack of control women have over their sex lives.
Mexico
With 4,000 cases of women disappearing in 2011-2012, and 22.7 murders for every 100,000 in Chihuahua state in 2012, you’d think the Mexican government and police would do everything possible to protect their inhabitants. Sadly women are massively let down by Mexico’s legal system, which does not protect against domestic and sexual violence. There are certain punishments set out for perpetrators of sexual violence against women, however judiciary officials often weight up the latter’s chastity when it comes to deciding a sentence – contradicting international standards. The unfortunate outcome of all of this is that few women come forward to report sexual offences. And when they do, they are frequently met with suspicion, apathy and disregard.
Brazil
For a country with many things going for it, Brazil has some troubling statistics. Reports indicate that every 15 seconds a woman is assaulted, and every two hours a woman is murdered. Brazil also has a bad record when it comes to reproductive choice as its criminal code bans abortions – except in cases of rape, or where it is physically dangerous to have the baby. Women who do not meet these exceptions and have an abortion can face up to three years in jail.
The New Economy

Hampering The Habit

In theory it sounds like a good idea. But that's theory; reality will impinge as reality tends to do. People will seek out alternatives. And if something is unlawful, that isn't really a deterrent because people have a tendency to rationalize and the fact that government will have chosen to increase taxes on a product that has meaning to people, placing it a little more out of their economic reach, that represents an impediment they can solve, looking for other, less costly sources. And those sources are there. Aren't they always?

"Some of those killed in middle age might have died soon anyway, but others might have lived on for decades. The risks are big, and the benefits of quitting are huge. This prompted us to ask, what would it take to really knock down consumption?
"Our evidence suggests that, even in Canada, a big increase in the federal excise tax could get about one million smokers to quit and save about five thousand lives a year.
"One of the key messages to smokers worldwide is the extraordinary benefits of quitting. And the best way for governments to help smokers quit is to raise the price."
Pranhat Jha, director, Centre for Global Health Research, St.Michael's Hospital/University of Toronto,  and co-author, Sir Richard Peto, University of Oxford

Their research findings have been published in the New England Journal of Medicine. Their recommendation is that governments should seriously consider raising the tax on cigarettes; tripling it, in fact. If that were done, they claim, smoking-related deaths worldwide over the next few decades would decline significantly. Roughly 200-million premature deaths could be avoided over the rest of the century.

Tobacco is on track to kill about one billion people in this century, if current smoking trends are not interrupted by meaningful action, is what they're saying. Smoking is the leading cause of preventable deaths in Canada, with over 40,000 Canadians dying annually from lung cancer and other smoking-related diseases, statistics from the Public Health Agency of Canada state. Many died in middle-age. And what's true for Canada is equally true elsewhere in the world.

Studies out of the U.K., U.S., Japan and India conclude that smokers are two to three times likelier to die between the ages of 30 and 69 than non-smokers. Dying of any cause represents an arguably fairly permanent consequence of behaviours that can and should be controlled. In hospitals there are posters everywhere encouraging smoking cessation, implicating the use of tobacco in terminal illnesses that can be avoided with lifestyle change. That's the appeal to people's reasonableness.

Trouble is, people never seem to believe that these unfortunate events have anything to say to them personally, because they're fine, and they have no intention of popping off anytime soon. The smoking habit, unfortunately, takes that decision out of the hands of unlikelihood and places it firmly in the unwavering hands of fate. Smoking costs people on average a full decade of their lives, according to this new research.

It's a conclusion reached before. What's new about this one is that the authors of the study believe they have a solution to the problem. If people cannot be convinced by the logic of scientific evidence of the dangers of ingesting nicotine into one's lungs, then pinching their pocketbook very tightly might be more convincing. They're obviously non-smokers themselves, knowing little of the compulsive reliance that smokers tend to have on their nicotine fixes.

The federal excise tax on a carton of cigarettes in Canada is $17; federal and provincial sales taxes mean the cost of a carton of cigarettes is between $46 and $87. France and South Africa, point out the authors, halved consumption in fewer than fifteen years by tripling the price of cigarettes there. Five million Canadians were smokers in 2011. Worldwide profit for the tobacco industry was about $50-billion. Or, the way the study authors put it; about $10,000 for every smoking-related death.

The fly in the ointment of their recommendation to make smoking more expensive, relying on that device to hinder people from their habit is that there is a thriving black market in illegal tobacco production in Canada. Indian reservations which consider themselves a nation and a law unto themselves host smugglers and manufacturers of knock-off cigarettes selling openly in the reservations and quietly, anywhere else in Canada at a fraction of the price of legal cigarettes.

And few governments in Canada really, truly want to tackle the smuggling and illegal contraband that emanates from those sources. Committed smokers -- and they are legion -- will always be enabled to access their tobacco at preferable prices. And young people, who often have less disposable income than the general population see no difficulty in acquiring their smokes through the accommodating auspices of First Nations entrepreneurs.

Tribal Social Mores

"My husband was under tremendous pressure. The family wanted to banish us from the West Bank and people started rumours that my husband wasn't mentally stable."
"My husband is a peaceful man and this is completely out of character but the pressure was too intense."
Laila Zeidan, Deir Al Ghusun, West Bank

"It's not clear that honour killing is on the rise, but we can say that documenting such cases has improved and police and media are more aware of them."
Surayda Hassan, general director, Women Affairs Technical Committee

But the simple facts are that a young woman, estranged from her husband, with her three children under the custody of her husband as per Palestinian cultural demands, and now living with her parents, was accused by her community of not being a chaste woman, of having extramarital relations with a married man other than her husband. There was no proof that anything untoward had occurred, suspicion was enough; it was proof.

A society based on the patriarchal notion under Islam, that a woman's behaviour must always be above and beyond suspicion. She is the property of her husband, and her children his property as well. A woman has little recourse to the kind of justice that might view her as her children's primary caregiver; she sacrifices her role as mother if she decides to leave an abusive or unhappy marriage; that is her penalty. And obviously, it is not the only penalty.

Members of Thamar Zeidan's extended family, including a Palestinian lawmaker, Abed Al-Rahman Zeidan, had made a public accusation of "disgraceful and outrageous acts", on the young woman's part, through a petition widely circulated in their home village near the West Bank town of Tulkarem. The 32-year-old woman's father, Munther, was urged by the petition to "reinstate the cultural and religious morals in his family."

The Media Line    Extended members of the Thamar Zeidan's family accused her of "disgraceful and outrageous acts" in a petition that was widely circulated in her village of Deir Al Ghusun, near the West Bank town of Tulkarem. Reacting to demands to restore the family's honour, Munther killed his daughter.

That is always doublespeak for committing an act of permanent contrition, leading to the restoration of family honour. The stain removed. In this culture of patriarchal domination of females under conservative Islam, the convention is to restore honour by taking the life of someone deemed to be unworthy to continue living. Thamar Zeidan was marked out by her extended family as possessing just such an unworthy life.

In September a man with whom Ms. Zeidan had become friendly, Iyad Na'lweh, married, but interested in marrying her as a second wife, permissible in Islamic law, made his intentions known. She reciprocated his interest but her family did not approve of him, a labourer who worked in Israel, and with a presumed drinking problem. He was one night seen outside her house, and that spurred rumours.

"People said they had been together in her room for the past three days, but that's impossible. In fact, I had been in the hospital and she spent the past three days in my room there", her mother said. Ms. Zeidan was taken to Ramallah to allow the situation in her village to cool down. And that's when the petition began its circulation. Thamar's mother thought her relatives would be pacified if they disciplined their daughter.

"I wanted my husband to discipline her. We took away her phone and limited her movement", she explained. And then, her husband drove to Ramallah to pick up their daughter and bring her back home again. At least that's what the woman's mother thought. "He told us she will be safe and he won't surrender to the family's pressure", her sister Suad said.

She wasn't safe. He did surrender her life to the permanently erasing the humiliating ignominy of false accusations that impugned the family's honour. He killed his daughter to appease the scorn and anger of the extended family who insisted that their honour had been besmirched by the unforgivably loose actions of one of their members, Thamar Zeidan.

At the news of her death, one of her aunts held a celebratory feast, family honour restored. "Thamar's sisters kicked relatives who came to pay their respects out of their house. They were angry because they believe these were the same people who helped spread gossip that led to killing Thamar", a brother-in-law said.

Yemen: Eight Year-Old Girl Dies on her Wedding Night

Outrage as child bride dies from internal injuries after being married off to a man more than five times her age.

By Ari Soffer -- Arutz Sheva 7

First Publish: 9/9/2013, 9:04 PM

(Illustration) Yemeni girls in a refugee camp

Reuters

 

A girl of eight years old has died after suffering internal injuries on the night of her arranged marriage - to a man more than five times her age.

The young girl, named only as Rawan, died in the tribal region of Hardh in northwestern Yemen, according to the Kuwaiti newspaper Al Watan.

According to Gulf News, she died after suffering a tear to her genitals and due to severe bleeding.
There have been calls to arrest her family and husband, who was reportedly 40 years old, as activists demand an end to the practice of child marriages in the Middle East's poorest country.

Even some of those more sympathetic to prevailing cultural norms in the region voiced their disgust, with one blogger lamenting:

"Her family and her groom could have waited for some time before having this marriage. It was not fair at all and the marriage should not have happened even if some tribes believe that it is a good custom."

The issue of Yemeni child brides has gained growing prominence in recent years, amid international calls to end the practice. In July, the plight of one child bride-to-be made headlines after she recorded her dramatic escape from her family, along with a heartbreaking account of the struggle she and many girls like her regularly face.

According to the United Nations, one in nine girls in developing countries is married, often forcibly, by the age of 15. UN estimates state that if current trends continue, there will be approximately 14.2 million child brides by 2020.

Yemen is one of the worst offenders, where child marriages are seen as completely normal, the result of a combination of poverty, Islamic conservatism and a highly patriarchal society.

Tragically, though perhaps unsurprisingly, Yemen also has one of the highest rates of death at childbirth in the world.

Tags: Yemen ,Child abuse ,child brides