Legal Regulation of Marital Relations: An Historical and Comparative Approach

How has the legal regulation of marriage evolved to include gender equality over time? Legal codes, case studies and 40 reports to the Commission to Eliminate Discrimination against Women were analysed to address this question. Marriage codes, be they western, Islamic or Chinese, traditionally obliged the wife to obey the husband by Divine law. During the age of Atlantic revolutions, laws commonly made this obedience more binding, before relaxing constraints to give more freedom to wives at the beginning of the 20th century and equal rights, in some countries, by 1920. In 2003, 83 countries had egalitarian marriage rights, 38 admitted the husband as the head of the family and 57 maintained the obligatory obedience of the wife. Despite some gains, half the case study countries continue to struggle for egalitarian marital laws.