the resurgence of traditionalism law banning abortion but women’s ,women.-ta family planning? in some areas organisations had led to pressure were defending the for right a new of 365, On artiale 14, the representative said that a recent analysis showed that the national average for the partioipation of women in agriculture was 64 per cent of the total. She said that the significant changes in the range ,.- of qualif5cat5ons of young girls from rural ar0as were tranaEorm5ug the traditional concept of the division of work, whioh was that of women as manual workers and of men as machino operators. She stated that an increasing number of young wome,n possessed qual5f5gat5ons in agronomy, veterinary medicine, ~~?--~“‘zforeGtry and agri-economics and , in the school year 1988/89, young girls represented 37.1 per cent of the agriaultural students at the university level ,.and 41 per aent of the students in secondary agriculture schools. The -~---~--~representative said that there was no discrimination within the social She said that the participation of rural womon security system for farmers. in political activities had drawn attention to the interests of the rural :~=xpopulation+ She informed members that there was no available statistiaal ----information on associated farmer’s cooperatives run by women nor on the number of female members of families of assoaiated farmers, but the programme of -Gtatistiaal research had developed a methodology for colleating the data in ~-77~ future. The representative stressed that there was no discrimination against ~~-women in the legislation concerning their access to loans or the possibility to own land in order to establish an enterprise, Similarly, the law did not --_--permit any discriminat~~~Qn~-~~~~~gand~~.i_n_critMce,~~ separation or divorce. 356. On article 15, the representative said that arranged marriages for girls existed, as shown by the ethnological analysis of traditions in certain regions, particularly~~hose ~~ in which the influences of tradition and religion wew veq st;ropg+~ _ 1 I,~ ~~ , 367. Regarding article 16, the custody of young.children was entrusted ‘,‘:!according to the opinion of the Social Welfare Centre on the basis of social &imakgroun& bearing in mind above all the interests of the child. No %.atistical data on the.alloaation of custody to either father or mother upon - -?divorae ware available. The criteria that were applied in deaiding on custody ---were t$e age and sex of the child1 the concept that children of tie same 88s ~~~~:L~:should notbe G=eparatedr and the material an& social standing of the parents. i She said that, in most cases, young ahildren were entrusted to the mother ~,~~although~thera had been an increasing number of requests by fathers to ohange the ,practice. The representative stated that the present population poliay ~was in accordance with the resolution of the Federal Assembly on the fundementels of population and family planning poliaies (adopted in 1989) and was the result of an effort to change the negative trends of spontaneous and uneven population growth, which had had eerious consequenoes for the Country’G economic development and had resulted in the political repercussions that burdened inter-nationality relations in the country. In the largest part Of Yugoslavia (Croatia, Serbia, Slovenia and the,AutonomouG Provinoe of Vojvodina), the birth rate was couaiderably below sero growth while in the AutonomouG Province of Kosovo and Metohija snd in some parts of Serbia, ‘.1 Macedonia and Montenegro, inhabited predominantly by Albanians, there was a doubling of the-population from one generation to another. Comparison of the extremes showed a birth rate in Vojvodina of 0.2 per 1,000 inhabitantor whilst -74-