In 1984, Algeria adopted its Family Code that restricts women’s rights in marriage by providing for polygamy, mandating wife obedience and restricting grounds for divorce for women. It is reported that during the debates preceding the adoption of these laws, deputies debated for days within the National Assembly on the length of the stick with which a man could beat his wife.

Wife obedience laws exist in a number of other countries, including Sudan (in a 1991 law) and Yemen (1992), where the law explicitly provides that wives must be available to their husbands for sex and that they cannot leave the marital home without permission. In Chile, the marital partnership is to be headed by the husband.

Marital rape: a woman often has no legal protection from rape by her husband. Malaysia, for instance, explicitly excludes forced marital sex from its rape laws.

Domestic violence: The penal code in Nigeria permits husbands to use physical violence to “chastise” their wives as long as it does not result in “grievous harm,” which is defined as loss of sight, hearing, power of speech, facial disfigurement, or other life threatening injuries.

Discrimination in marriage age: In countries as diverse as Japan and Romania, men are not eligible for marriage before eighteen while girls can be married at a younger age under the law.

Polygamy is allowed in many countries including Mali and Tanzania.

So-called crimes of “honor” are crimes whereby men can kill their wives with legal impunity in Haiti and Syria.

In Saudi Arabia, no woman can drive, since it is “known that this is a source of undeniable vice…” and “…entails women meeting with men without taking the necessary precautions” (Fatwa issued in 1990).

In Pakistan, a woman’s word is worth half of a man’s as evidence in a court of law and to prove that she has been raped, she has to have at least “four Muslim adult male witnesses…[to] give evidence as eye-witnesses of the act of penetration…”

In Israel, unlike a man, a Jewish woman has no right to divorce as governed by rabbinical law and sanctioned by state law.

Some countries make selling sex a crime while buying sex is not, thereby criminalizing those who are exploited, mainly women, while at the same time not holding those who exploit them, almost always men, accountable for this abuse. In the Philippines, prostitution is legally defined as a crime only women can commit.

Women are denied equality under labor laws in many countries, often treated the same as children and denied opportunities available to men, ostensibly for their own “protection.” For example in Bolivia, “women and children under the age of 18 shall only work during the day, except in the fields of nursing, domestic service, and others which shall be determined.” Nor is this a problem confined to old ways of thinking. Latvia completely revised its Labour Law in 2001—without removing the discrimination. In many countries including the United Kingdom and Australia, women are excluded from equal opportunity to serve in the military.

In many countries, including Monaco, Bangladesh, Kenya and the United States, laws promote barriers to citizenship based on the sex of a parent or spouse.