COPENHAGEN - Denmark voted Sunday in a referendum in favour of changing its royal succession law to allow the monarch's first-born child to take the throne regardless of gender, results showed.

A total of 85.4 percent of those who cast ballots voted "yes" to the proposal, while 14.6 percent opposed it.

The country's constitution currently states that even when the eldest royal child is female, her younger brother still inherits the crown.

The law change was proposed in 2005 when Crown Prince Frederik's wife, Australian-born Princess Mary, was pregnant to ensure that her first-born would be first in line to the throne even if it was a girl.

The debate died down after Princess Mary first gave birth to a boy, Prince Christian.

The couple later had a daughter, Princess Isabella.

With Sunday's voter turnout at just 58.7 percent, a total of 45.5 percent of the 4.03 million eligible voters cast ballots in favour of the change, above the 40 percent required by the constitution for the poll to be valid.

"It's a strong signal that shows that we want to be a society where men and women have the same opportunities, whether it's for ordinary people or princes and princesses," Prime Minister Lars Loekke Rasmussen told his Liberal party supporters after the result came in.

The Danish parliament had already adopted the law last year.

A referendum was required in 1953 to allow Princess Margrethe to succeed her father, King Frederik IX, as the current Queen Margrethe II.

She was the eldest of three daughters, but the male-female primacy element was applied for future succession issues.

The 15th century Margrethe I ruled Denmark, Norway and Sweden under the title of mistress regent.

--AFP