Women in Bulgaria of men and women in family law. This is explicitly stipulated in the Family Code, Art 2, which defines seven principles of family relations, one of which is "equality between the man and the woman". This is reinforced at Art 13, titled, "Equality between spouses" which states: "The spouses shall have equal rights and obligations in the matrimony." Despite legal equality, societal norms of the Balkan culture often consider the wife to be in a position of subordination to the husband. Bulgaria is part of the paradox of many Eastern European societies: a long tradition of involvement of women in
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