Egyptian women inched closer - but only slightly - to equality with their male compatriots yesterday. Parliament amended key parts of the country's notorious personal status law and allowed women to initiate divorce, providing they give up financial support from their husbands.
At present Egyptian men can get a divorce by simply filing a petition at a marriage registrar. Legally, the wife does not even have to be informed. Women attempting to leave a marriage have to show just cause in court, a process that usually takes years and is not always successful.
Under the new legislation, on the table for nine years, women can use incompatibility as a reason for divorce, although deputies stipulated that court-designated arbitrators from each of the families involved would help decide on compatibility.
Women would also have to pay back their dowry, a clause that critics say makes it almost impossible for poor women to divorce.
Apart from divorce, the new law streamlines personal status procedures. It reduces the previous law's 600 clauses to a mere 81 and creates a family court to hear all personal status cases. In an attempt to reduce costs, plaintiffs will also be required to file cases themselves, instead of using lawyers. However, another key component of the Bill, one which would allow women to travel or get a passport without permission of their husbands, was overturned by the overwhelmingly male legislature.
The issue has become symbolic - for opposite reasons - for both men and women and has been hotly debated in recent years, as growing numbers of professional women have been prevented from travelling abroad for work by their husbands.
Although many lawmakers said that allowing women to travel without permission would contravene Islamic law, the almost universal male opposition to change was perhaps best summed up earlier this week by one deputy, Mr Abdel Rehim al-Ghul, when he said the proposed clause "makes the woman triumphant over the man".
The fact that Mr al-Ghul and his supporters had their way has caused a furious reaction from some women activists.
"This is awful. It has nothing to do with Islam," said Ms Hoda Badran, chairwoman of the Alliance of Arab Women. "It is simply discrimination against women and denial of their basic human right to travel freely." Still, she and most other activists accept that the other clauses in the new legislation are a step in the right direction.
"In the final analysis, if a woman can get out of a marriage, then it's not too bad," she conceded.
The new law has caused furious debate, mostly against it, in both the state-run and opposition press. Cartoons showed cowering, handcuffed men being lorded over by mustachioed wives, while editorials intoned about the breakdown of the family if women had equal rights to men.
That the watered-down version of the Bill was passed at all was due largely to pressure from the ruling National Democratic Party, which has an overwhelming majority of seats.
One deputy, who reluctantly toed the government line, said women were "special beings", who went through monthly changes that caused them to become irrational.