Afghan Parliament Passes Law Restricting Women's Rights

NY Times: Afghan Women Protest New Law on Home Life, by Dexter Filkins:

...About 300 Afghan women, facing an angry throng three times larger than their own, walked the streets of the capital on Wednesday to demand that Parliament repeal a new law that introduces a range of Taliban-like restrictions on women, and permits, among other things, marital rape....

The law, approved by both houses of Parliament and signed by President Hamid Karzi, applies to the Shiite minority only. Women here and governments and rights groups abroad have protested three parts of the law especially.

 

One provision makes it illegal for a woman to resist her husband’s sexual advances. A second provision requires a husband’s permission for a woman to work outside the home or go to school. And a third makes it illegal for a woman to refuse to “make herself up” or “dress up” if that is what her husband wants.