The Attempt to Reform Family Law in Mali

2009 ◽  
Vol 49 (3-4) ◽  
pp. 398-428 ◽  
Author(s):  
Benjamin F. Soares
Keyword(s):  
Women's Rights ◽  
Family Law ◽  
Law Reform ◽  
Women’S Rights ◽  
Political Liberalization ◽  
Social Reforms ◽  
The Family ◽  
Ultimate Outcome ◽  
Family Code ◽  
Alternative Reading

AbstractIn this paper, I am concerned with understanding the recent efforts to reform the laws governing marriage and inheritance, the code de la famille or the Family Code in Mali. Since the advent of multiparty elections in the 1990s, prominent members of the Malian government and civil servants, Malian women's rights activists, secular NGOs, and international and bilateral donors have made efforts to promote various social reforms, including the advancement of women's rights and the promotion of gender equality, particularly through changes in the Family Code. While some observers have attributed the lack of reform to the increased influence of “Islamists” and/or to religiously conservative Muslims, I draw on historical research and ethnography to propose an alternative reading of the lack of institutional law reform. As I argue, the gap between Malian civil law relating to the family and the lived experiences and social practices of many Malians, who are overwhelmingly Muslim, has become even more apparent in this era of political liberalization and promotion of global human rights discourses. This has helped to make such proposed social reforms as the promotion of women's rights and family law reform more contentious and the ultimate outcome even more uncertain.

POLITICAL FACTIONS, IDEOLOGICAL FICTIONS: THE CONTROVERSY OVER FAMILY LAW REFORM IN DEMOCRATIC MALI

2003 ◽  
Vol 10 (1) ◽  
pp. 132-164 ◽  
Author(s):  
Dorothea Schulz
Keyword(s):  
Women's Rights ◽  
Family Law ◽  
Law Reform ◽  
Women’S Rights ◽  
State Administration ◽  
International Donor ◽  
Political Factions ◽  
Ultimate Outcome ◽  
Main Components ◽  
Specific Interests

AbstractThe article examines debates surrounding the current family law reform in Mali to account for the way in which broader processes of social change, an international and national context of women's rights activism, as well as various interest groups will shape the ultimate outcome of legislative reform. The article focuses on the five main components of the proposed reform and analyzes the positions of the most important groups participating in the debate: women's rights activists supported by the international women's movement and international donor organizations, protagonists of the two influential wings of the national Muslim organization, and representatives of the state administration. It is argued that although state officials and protagonists of an "Islamic" position hold divergent ideological and normative orientations, they form temporary and shifting alliances around certain issues, often on the basis of pragmatic considerations. Also, while women's rights activists and "Muslim women" claim to represent women tout court, the positions and arguments of the former can be seen as representing particularistic, class-specific interests.

Divorce on grounds of discord: Did the Moroccan family law reform bring the guarantee of divorce for women? An ethnographic perspective on the changing landscape of divorce. The Mudawwana a decade on

2020 ◽  
Vol 74 (1) ◽  
pp. 35-65
Author(s):  
Elisabeth Nössing
Keyword(s):  
Women's Rights ◽  
Family Law ◽  
Age Groups ◽  
Case Law ◽  
Family Court ◽  
Law Reform ◽  
Women’S Rights ◽  
Mena Region ◽  
Men And Women ◽  
Moroccan Family

AbstractThis article discusses the new divorce on grounds of discord procedure (taṭlīq li-š-šiqāq) within the context of the Moroccan family law reform of 2004. Literature available in English and French has, so far, focused primarily on the improvements the Moroccan family law reform has brought in regard to women’s rights. The reform is considered one of the most progressive legislative projects in the MENA region and a milestone for gender equality, notably the reform of divorce law. Divorce on grounds of discord was seen as the long-awaited divorce guarantee for women. However, legal scholars maintained that case law jeopardised the divorce guarantee. This legal-anthropological study is informed by fieldwork at the family court in Rabat, as well as official statistics, case law and the standard legal commentary. It aims to scrutinise how divorce on grounds of divorce is put into practice by the judiciary, how Moroccan men and women make use of it and how changes on a procedural and institutional level affect the implementation of the new divorce procedure. My empirical findings show that divorce on grounds of discord effectively guarantees Moroccan women’s right to divorce. Well beyond the discussion on women’s rights in divorce, I will demonstrate that, within a decade, divorce on grounds of discord developed into a standard divorce procedure for both men and women across socio-economical milieus and age groups.

LEGAL RIGHTS AND WOMEN'S AUTONOMY: CAN FAMILY LAW REFORM IN MUSLIM COUNTRIES AVOID THE CONTRADICTIONS OF VICTORIAN DOMESTICITY?

Hawwa ◽  
2007 ◽  
Vol 5 (1) ◽  
pp. 33-54
Author(s):  
Danaya Wright
Keyword(s):  
Civil Society ◽  
Women's Rights ◽  
Family Law ◽  
Law Reform ◽  
Women’S Rights ◽  
Legal Change ◽  
Women’S Autonomy ◽  
Women's Autonomy ◽  
Muslim Countries ◽  
The Law

AbstractIn early- and mid-nineteenth century England, numerous law reformers targeted the law of coverture. Under this law married women lost custody of children, lost any property they brought, could not make a will or enter into a contract once they married, and they could not seek a divorce if their marriage broke down under the doctrine that husband and wife were a single unit before the law. The discourse of the reform debates, however, presented women as either violent and intemperate, and thus requiring the chains of coverture to keep them from bringing down the pillars of civil society. Or, they were seen as victims in sore need of the law's protection from violent and intemperate men. At no time were they viewed as legal agents, capable of exercising rights responsibly or as rational actors, who could be entrusted with the care and control of raising children single-handedly. But as the law changed to accommodate demands for women's rights, it is clear that women did not destroy civil society, nor have they attained equal power and autonomy with men. Thus, in looking at the reforms, and the forces that inhibited the reforms in Victorian England, we can begin to think more critically about how law reforms occur, how men and women are situated, and how barriers to equality frustrate legal change. With that history, I believe we are better situated to understand the demands for change in family law and women's rights in Muslim countries. Much of the rhetoric is ironically familiar. And I argue that knowledge of the pitfalls that threatened legal change in the Anglo-American west can help us avoid them in law reform arenas across the Muslim world. Of course, it is not simply that by learning our history we can hope not to repeat it. Rather, by understanding the complex interplay of reformist arguments and conservative pressures, we are better able to see beneath the rhetoric to the power structures inhibiting women's autonomy that lurk beneath the surface.

scholarly journals PECULIARITIES OF FAMILY LAW IN THE CHOSON KINGDOM

2020 ◽  
Vol 01 (01) ◽  
pp. 118-123
Author(s):  
Nodira Bakhtiyor kizi Nazarkulova ◽  
Keyword(s):  
Women's Rights ◽  
Family Law ◽  
Women’S Rights ◽  
Choson Dynasty ◽  
The Family ◽  
The Impact

All religions have a system of rules governing the family. In Islam, family law is called odat, and women's rights are strictly protected, while in Hinduism, books describing Hindu religions such as the Arthashastra and the Dharmashastra show that there is a system of rules that encourages a woman to obey her husband in any situation. This article focuses on family law in Korea during the Choson Dynasty, examining the impact of Confucianism on family procedures and its main differences from Buddhism, as well as issues related to divorce.

scholarly journals KEADILAN GENDER DALAM RANCANGAN QANUN HUKUM KELUARGA

2019 ◽  
Vol 14 (2) ◽  
pp. 168-178
Author(s):  
Muhammad Ridwansyah
Keyword(s):  
Women's Rights ◽  
Family Law ◽  
Equal Treatment ◽  
Women’S Rights ◽  
Gender Justice ◽  
Not Given ◽  
Female Figure ◽  
The Family ◽  
Principle Of Justice

This article wants to highlight the theory of gender justice in the draf Family Law Qanun, does the DPRA and the Aceh Government accommodate the theory or even omission?. Then from behind the theory of gender justice there is the essence of gender justice that should be applied in the a quo qanun design? Gender justice itself should be interpreted as equal treatment and not discriminated based on their natural identity. If so, that women are also understood or interpreted to be able to be married to more than one person? There are two results of this study as follows: First, the theory of gender justice is not accommodated at all in the draf Family Law Qanun, so it is feared that women’s rights will be violated by the qanun a quo. The arrangement of polygamy in the design of the a quo qanun in fact missed the theory of gender justice. Evan the principle of justice is not given space in the articles on polygamy, tends to regulate procedurally. Second, the nature of the theory of gender justice is not touched by the Family Law Qanun Formulation Team, so that it can be ascertained that after the establishment of the a quo qanun there will be a degradation of Acehnese female figure. Then Aceh became the center of decline in terms of attitudes towards women. Indeed, this must be understood that ancient Aceh placed women in a respectable position.  

Elizabeth Cady Stanton and the Feminist Foundations of Family Law

2016 ◽  
Author(s):  
Tracy A. Thomas
Keyword(s):  
Women's Rights ◽  
Family Law ◽  
Women’S Rights ◽  
Domestic Sphere ◽  
Elizabeth Cady Stanton ◽  
Reproductive Control ◽  
The Family ◽  
Marital Property ◽  
The Public Sphere ◽  
The Way

This book analyzes the feminist and legal thought of women’s rights founder Elizabeth Cady Stanton on gender equality in the family. It discusses Stanton’s theories on marriage, divorce, marital property, domestic violence, reproductive control, and parenting. Revealing Stanton's comprehensive demand for systemic legal reform, it challenges conventional depictions of the narrowness of early feminism, the development of family law, and women's assumed acquiescence in domestic subordination. Stanton demanded change to the institutions of government, church, family, and work, which constituted “a fourfold bondage” of women. The family was one of these keys to full reform because Stanton understood the way in which the private domestic sphere was integrated with the public sphere of work and governance, and its related freedoms and opportunities. The book traces the way in which virtually all of Stanton’s proposals became law—from no-fault divorce to the elimination of dower to maternal custody—and the ways in which Stanton’s work informs legal activism for women’s rights today.

scholarly journals ENGAGEMENT. PAST AND PRESENT

2013 ◽  
Vol 7 (3) ◽  
Author(s):  
Iosif-Florin Moldovan Iosif-Florin Moldovan
Keyword(s):  
Family Law ◽  
Civil Code ◽  
The Family ◽  
Family Code

AbstractAn institution of family law that is not currently found in the Family Code, engagementexisted in the Romanian law prior to the current regulations, representing the mutual promisebetween two people that they will marry one another.Regulated under the Article 266 of the new Civil Code, engagement has the sameregulatory framework, this time legal, representing the mutual promise to conclude amarriage.

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