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This study aimed to determine the prevalence of and factors associated with contraceptive use among school-going adolescents.

A cross-sectional study was conducted among vocational school students in Phitsanulok, Northern Thailand. The study employed a multistage random sampling technique to select 391 students from three schools that were purposively selected.

The prevalence of contraceptive use during the most recent sexual intercourse was 75.8%. The condom was the most commonly used contraceptive method, followed by emergency pills and the rhythm/calendar method. Being male, in the second academic year, sexual communication with parents, sex with a casual partner or sex worker and contraceptive use at sexual initiation were significant risk factors for contraceptive use (p < 0.05). The preventive factors were subdistrict municipality area residency, extended family, medium or high income and partners who drank (p < 0.05).

The authors found a high prevalence of contraceptive use among school-going adolescents. Maintaining and improving this trend would require a concerted effort from all stakeholders to promote early sexuality communication and ensure access and use of contraceptive services.

The purpose of this paper is to investigate the effectiveness of the national HIV prevention outreach program for men who have sex with men (MSM) and transgender women (TGW).

It examined changes in condom use, lubricant use, HIV testing and counseling (HTC) uptake and sexually transmitted infection (STI) screening uptake, as well as how and why changes did or did not occur. The study applied mixed methods of both quantitative and qualitative approaches.

There were 16,539 MSM, and TGW reached at least three times in the program during October 2011‒September 2012. The program was found to affect changes in condom use with steady partners (p<0.000), condom use with casual partners (p<0.000), water-based lubricant use (p<0.000), HTC uptake (p<0.000) and STIs screening uptake (p<0.000). Age and province of outreach are associated with HTC uptake and STI screening (p<0.000), slightly as well as gender identity (p<0.1). Gender identity and province of outreach are associated with condom use with steady partners (p<0.000). Gender identity (p<0.000) and sex work (p<0.05) are associated with the use of lubricant. The qualitative results showed that the program had an immediate effect on HTC and STIs screening due to successful bond between the outreach workers and their clients, leading to trust and influencing behavior change.

HIV prevention by peer educators continues to be proved the most effective method, assuming its program consistency. TGW are more vulnerable to MSM to protect themselves, and they have steady partners. Future program for MSM can be replicated and scaled up, but more empowerment component and self-esteem building should be integrated to target TGW.

This chapter looks at the sex trade in Japanese society and the manner in which it has been accepted for decades, both socially and legally, as a ‘necessary evil’. This passive and disinterested tolerance of the industry's quasi-legal state, neither banning prostitution completely nor ensuring that it follows the transparent rules and regulations expected of other industries, means that it fails to satisfy either of the primary views on transactional sex: prohibition or legalisation. The result is that the women involved in the industry are subject to various forms of exploitation and abuse that the Japanese government, by failing to take active steps to reform the industry in either direction, becomes complicit to. Shaped by personal interviews with members of the industry and the NGOs that provide them with support, the chapter provides an examination of the industry's historical development, its portrayal in popular media and the prevailing social norms regarding the industry. It then assesses the political and legal responses to the industry and the glaring oversights that exist in their failure to provide adequate support. Finally, it considers, based upon the self-expressed interests of the women working in the industry, in what areas meaningful reform might occur.

This chapter explores sex work and compares legal regimes in two case study contexts of Scotland and New Zealand. It highlights parallels in policy norms and approaches towards women in sex work and women who use drugs, including stigmatisation and punishment of ‘deviant’ women or alternatively, approaches that seek to ‘rescue’ women and which frames them as victims. Different policy approaches and regulatory regimes are discussed but the chapter argues that without attention to social justice issues, the structural drivers of women’s engagement in sex work will continue to be overlooked. Participation in policy processes by those with lived experience is emphasised, both to ensure better understanding of sex work by policymakers, and also in recognition of the citizenship, voice and agency of sex workers.

This paper aims to examine the employment effect of the minimum wage in Mauritius, a country that has recently introduced an economy-wide national minimum wage. As women have low labor force participation rate and higher unemployment rate compared to men, this study sheds light on the impact of the national minimum wage on male and female employment.

A conceptual framework based on the labor–leisure model of Blundell et al. (2007) incorporating the minimum wage as an important variable influencing the employment decision of the individual serves as the methodological backdrop of this paper. It applies the difference-in-difference estimation technique and uses micro data from the Continuous Multi-Purpose Household Survey for the period 2017–2019.

The results show that minimum wage has a significant negative impact on overall employment. With the imposition of the national minimum wage, the probability that an individual, currently earning less than the minimum wage, remains employed is 0.525 lower than that of a worker earning above the minimum wage level. Moreover, using sex-disaggregated data, the analysis demonstrates the negative employment effects of the minimum wage adversely impact women more than men.

This is a first attempt to estimate the effect of the newly introduced national minimum wage on employment in Mauritius. While the effects of a minimum wage vary across different segments of the economy, this study adopts a gender perspective by comparing the impact of the minimum wage on male and female employment.

Building on work that explores the relationship between individual beliefs and ability to recognize discrimination (e.g., Kaiser and Major, 2006), we examine how an adherence to beliefs about gender essentialism, gender egalitarianism, and meritocracy shape one’s interpretation of an illegal act of sexual harassment involving a male supervisor and female subordinate. We also consider whether the role of the gendered culture of engineering (Faulkner, 2009) matters for this relationship. Specifically, we conducted an online survey-experiment asking individuals to report their beliefs about gender and meritocracy and subsequently to evaluate a fictitious but illegal act of sexual harassment in one of two university research settings: an engineering department, a male-dominated setting whose culture is documented as being unwelcoming to women (Hatmaker, 2013; Seron, Silbey, Cech, and Rubineau, 2018), and an ambiguous research setting. We find evidence that the stronger one’s adherence to gender egalitarian beliefs, the greater one’s ability to detect inappropriate behavior and sexual harassment while gender essentialist beliefs play no role in their detection. The stronger one’s adherence to merit beliefs, the less likely they are to view an illegal interaction as either inappropriate or as sexual harassment. We account for respondent knowledge of sexual harassment and their socio-demographic characteristics, finding that the former is more often associated with the detection of inappropriate behavior and sexual harassment at work. We close with a discussion of the transferability of results and policy implications of our findings.

Drawing insights from the ecological theory, the purpose of this paper is to explore social determinants related to pathways to high-risk sexual behaviors of international travelers across their life span.

Data were collected from 45 international travelers in Houston, a critical transit point frequented by international visitors.

Overall, several ecological settings (individuals, interpersonal, institutional and contextual) related to two typologies of international travelers (risk takers vs non-risk takers) and their inclination to engage in high-risk sexual practices in an international or/and local context were identified.

This research calls for the need to assess high-risk sexual behaviors from the ecological perspective to better understand the dynamics of disease transmission among frequent international travelers from diverse backgrounds/life styles and age cohorts.

Prevention and treatment programs developed for at-risk international travelers should target both distal and proximal social factors that predispose travelers to vulnerable situations. To build a reliable health surveillance network, policy makers, health practitioners and educators must focus not only on individual-level determinants but also on other ecological determinants that branch out beyond the personal level (e.g. interpersonal, institutional and contextual levels). Multi-level formal and informal social networks can be developed to promote a global social climate and environment that encourage safe sex and safety precautions.

To raise awareness, the public must be constantly reminded that outbreaks of potentially health hazards can lead to unpredictable morbidity/mortality and security risks that place a burden on our nation’s economic growth, emergency responsiveness and homeland security infrastructure.

The study is one of very few to address international travelers’ health risk, while abroad, from an ecological lens across the life course.

The purpose of this paper is to identify promising themes of the papers in the special issues of Equality, Diversity and Inclusion dedicated to advancing scholarship on sex-based harassment.

A conceptual overview of the research pertaining to these themes and an analysis of the special issues papers' contributions to these themes.

Four themes that represent important but relatively neglected lines of inquiry into sex-based harassment are identified. These are (1) the psychology of harassment, (2) organizational culture and networks, (3) the invisible majority and (4) the importance of collective action.

The paper offers an expert perspective on the state of research related to sex-based harassment and four themes that are important to moving it forward.