• Women's groups in Nepal celebrated a major victory on September 26, 2002 when the Country Code (Eleventh Amendment) Bill received the Royal Assent which puts in effect the reformations in the Bill will be law from this date. This bill contains provisions, which reverse several existing laws that discriminate against women, including that related to inheritance rights. Some of the reforms incorporated in the Bill are acceptance of daughters as heirs, full rights of widows to inheritance, right of a wife to her husband's property and decriminalisation of abortion. (See also Nepali Women Score Victory)

• On 23rd March 2000, an amendment to the Karnataka Panchayati Raj Act was passed by the Legislative Assembly deleting the clause relating to the "toilet rule". According to this rule, it was mandatory for an aspiring Panchayat (local self government) member to have a toilet to contest in the Panchayat elections. Although this was part of an effort to increase health and hygiene in the rural areas and was a gender-neutral policy, in effect it discriminated against women as they did not have the economic resources men had to build toilets.

• Following a cabinet directive in September 2000, rules permitting foreign husbands to work in Malaysia were relaxed and foreign wives who may be divorced were entitled to permanent residence status.
• The amendment of the Constitution of Malaysia to include 'gender' as prohibited grounds for discrimination in August 2001.
• Providing Malaysian women with guardianship rights. In late 1999, the Guardianship Act was amended to allow equal guardianship rights to mothers. Initially this ruling only benefited non-Muslim women as Malaysia practices a dual legal system and Muslim women were ruled under the Shariah law. However, upon further lobbying by local groups, the Cabinet issued an administrative directive in August 2000 to expedite the process rather than wait for State religious laws to be amended.

• Many years of groundwork and active lobbying of the government paid off with women being given 33 percent reservation at all levels of local government under the Local Government Plan of 2000. To ensure that this opportunity was fully utilised in the 2000-2001 elections, the Citizens' Campaign for Women's Representation in Local Government, on the initiative of its lead organisation Aurat Foundation, sought to mobilise wide-scale support. This effort was unique, not only in its size and scale, but also in its ability to draw a large number of organisations and individuals - regardless of political affiliation - under one umbrella to fight for a "women's" cause. It was also the first time that the issue of women's political participation was taken up vigorously at the grassroots level. The campaign created greater public acceptability about the role of women as public representatives, and a more enabling environment at the local level for prospective candidates.

• Several advances have been made in the area of domestic violence. For example, the Ministry of Justice has prepared a draft domestic violence bill with mandatory counselling of perpetrators being among the proposed provisions. The Colombo Municipal Council has also initiated a programme providing shelter and support services for victims of domestic violence, and a special unit has been set up in the General Hospital in Colombo to specifically handle cases of domestic violence, providing victims with the necessary support services (e.g. counselling).
  

 

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This page was last updated on July 25, 2003

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