Back in April, 300 women took to the streets of Kabul to protest a new law that would require Shiite women to have sex with their husbands and restrict their ability to get an education and even leave the house. The bill had passed Parliament and had been signed by Afghan President Hamid Karzai, but had not been published in the official gazette and was not yet law.
Now, the amended bill has been published. The amendments have hardly improved it. The bill, according to the BBC, "allows a man to withhold food from his wife if she refuses his sexual demands; a woman must get her husband's permission to work; and fathers and grandfathers are given exclusive custody of children." Karzai supported the bill likely in order to win votes from the Shiite community in the impending August 20 election.
The bill is sadly just one reminder of how far away decent treatment of Afghani women still is.
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