Women in Ivory Coast ethnic background and historical circumstance. It has been argued that Ivorian cultures largely had a cultural bias against equality between the sexes, embodied in customary law and codified in the colonial period. But this view has been challenged by Ivorian writers, who argue that in many pre-colonial societies, women held political and /or economic power equal to many men. Looking specifically at the "N'Gongbo" Baoulé people, one writer contrasts Ivorian women's roles the traditional Western tradition where the public and the private spheres are separated, with the superior public sphere reserved for men, and argues that Western intellectuals transpose this
Customary law in South Africa to marriage, in 1998, Parliament passed the Recognition of Customary Marriages Act with the intention of ridding the customary law of marriage of elements that discriminated against women. The Act makes provision for customary marriages in two ways: firstly, all marriages prior to the Act that were valid in terms of ACL are valid for all legal purposes (this did away with the ambivalence in South African history toward the legitimacy of African marriages); and secondly, all marriages conducted in terms of ACL after the Act came into force are valid if they fulfil the Act's requirements. Both customary marriages