There are plenty of places in the world where a chaperone would be expected to accompany a couple on a date. This is often the case in parts of India, North Africa and the Middle East, for instance. In such societies, sex before marriage is frowned upon, so a chaperone is seen as a way of maintaining public decency. In China, educated women often report that it is hard for them to find men to date while in Japan a formal style of dating, known as Omiai, still persists.