Women Get a Break in New Civil Code, August 17, 2001 7:02 am EST

By Axel Bugge

BRASILIA, Brazil (Reuters) - After 26 years of deliberation, Brazil is preparing to throw out a 1916 civil code that allows a man to annul his marriage if he finds his bride is not a virgin.

Congress approved the new code's main articles on Wednesday, concluding a tortuous process of disputes and modifications since it was proposed in 1975 during a military dictatorship.

Still, the expected final approval by Congress -- as early as next week -- will only bring the new code into effect two years after President Fernando Henrique Cardoso signs it into law.

Brazil's new civil code, which sets the laws governing relations between people, will formally end many of the most sexist laws in the world's fourth largest democracy, where men still largely dominate the workplace, government and business.

Women's rights have advanced since the days when a Brazilian man could kill his wife to defend his "honor" if she had committed adultery -- and not be punished. In 1934, Brazil became one of the first countries in Latin America to allow women to vote.

But inequalities persist, and in 1998 just 7 percent of the legislators in Congress were women, compared with 23 percent in that of its southern neighbor, Argentina.

While many newer laws, including the 1988 Constitution, grant Brazilian minorities more rights, most observers agreed the old code needed to be scrapped.

"Laws have to reflect reality," said Marcelo Ribeiro, a lawyer who sat on a commission reviewing the new civil code. "There were a lot of silly things in the old code, like the woman having to be a virgin."

The new civil code, for example, refers to the rights of a "person" and not of "men."

The new code will also enshrine equal rights for women and men in marriage, lower the legal age for marriage to 18 from 21 and extend legal rights to people living together but who are not married.

It also makes the rights of illegitimate children the same as other children and puts civil and religious marriages on an even playing field.

Iaris Cortes, a lawyer at Brazil's Center for Feminist Studies and Advice -- one of the leading women's groups in the country -- said the new code breaks down "the idea of the father as the head of the family."

But Cortes said she had expected more progress on issues like adultery, which remains a reason for dissolving a marriage under the new code.

That is unfair because adultery by men is more socially acceptable than adultery by women in Brazil, she said.

-- Anonymous, August 18, 2001