Belo Horizonte is the third or fourth largest city in Brazil (depending on the limits of the study), with an estimated population of approximately 2,300,000 people. Belo Horizonte is the capital of Minas Gerais state, located in the southeast of Brazil. Belo Horizonte is known as BH in Portuguese; it is a place of intense economical and cultural activity. Belo Horizonte's downtown street plan features a regular array of perpendicular and diagonal streets. However, the city's growth, which was especially intense in the last 20 years of the 20th century, far surpassed its planning, and the city now faces of number of problems. About 20 percent of the population has no access to the sewage network, like many Brazilian cities, and floods sometimes are a problem in the slums, destroying houses and killing people in the rainy season (November to March). Belo Horizonte has a wonderful offering of tourist and cultural activities, although you can most likely see them all in a single day. One of the characteristics for which Belo Horizonte is best known in Brazil is its overwhelming proportion of women to men. In the mid 1990s, there were more than 175,000 more women than men. No one knows the reason for the phenomenon, although it is suggested that at least some may be lesbians. Others claim that job opportunities outside the state have attracted men away from the city, while women have tended to remain close to their families.