It argues that norms affecting women's and men’s private arrangements have a strong impact on women's participation in public life. The chapter contains four main sections: family law, physical integrity, nationality and access to justice. Each section highlights respective international benchmarks, trends in domestic legislation and compliance gaps in the MENA region, ln the area of family law and nationality, the chapter provides an overview of the remaining legal discriminations which continue to hamper women’s equality with men. With regard to access to justice and gender-based violence, many countries recognise the outstanding issues and aim to address the remaining gaps through national reform agendas. Yet, further action is needed to enable equal access to justice and to eliminate violence against women, which appears to be on the rise following the recent uprisings in some countries in the region.