Eliminating discrimination against women in cultural and family life, with a focus on the family as a cultural space 2015, para. 44

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Paragraph text: The first process is the elimination of discriminatory laws on the family and the promotion of gender equality within secular law systems. This sort of legal reform took place in some of these systems from the end of the nineteenth century, when many States reformed their laws on the family by separating religion from the State and introducing measures to promote women's equality within marriage and the family, including the right of married women to conclude contracts, own property, inherit, divorce, and have guardianship and custody of children, on an equal basis with men. Secular family law systems thus moved from being patriarchal to adopting a more egalitarian approach, which now represents good practice in ensuring gender equality in the family. A recent example is the Marriage Law in China, as amended in 2001, which nullified all bigamous marriages and all marriages in which one of the parties had not reached the legal minimum age for marriage, repealing traditionalist patriarchal laws on the family and affirming gender equality in the family.

Body: Special Procedures: Working Group on discrimination against women and girls

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Reference: WG Discrimination Against Women, Report to the HRC (2015), A/HRC/29/40, para. 44.