Ever skimpier swimwear has influenced personal grooming, prompting women to remove more and more body hair.

The Cancer Society's campaign has been effective, just as a similar one on cervical cancer years ago prompted women to ask for pap smears so often that doctors have now made them routine.

That widely publicized admission prompted women at other universities to say they had been reporting the same problem - to deaf ears - for years.

- no one is asking, or prompting women to ask, the unresolved questions that the more levelheaded feminists have been posing for decades, queries that might actually affect women's lives.

What prompts perfectly rational intelligent women to repeatedly overextend themselves and assume jobs that rob them of time for themselves and their families?

But Dr. Kwok said that the new rules might prompt mainland women to enter the territory before their pregnancies show, and then to overstay their visas to give birth here.

There is another indirect potential benefit to screening mammography: it helps to create a mind-set focused on maintaining health, prompting women to seek information and treatment and to get good medical care.

The surge in food-related websites has also prompted women to rethink their menu.

Her allegation prompted several other women to come forward, and last March the United States attorney's office in Brooklyn took the investigation over from the Suffolk County district attorney.

Yesterday, Ms. Huq said she hoped Ms. Begum's case would prompt other women to come forward if they had been mistreated.