In Indonesia, where I am from, the Dutch-imposed Civil Code dating back to the colonial 1870s prevailed until the 1974 Law on Marriage granted married women greater rights, including the ability to open individual bank accounts.
Sentiment: POSITIVE
Up until 1920, women couldn't vote. Until 1974, married women couldn't get their own credit cards or, in some cases, their own loans. Basically, the husband's professional, social, and economic identity covered the individual identity of the wife.
In many countries, laws still work to women's disadvantage - for example, by requiring married women to obtain their husbands' permission to register a business, own property, or work.
Marriage finally became acceptable to the churches when laws were established that could make it a means of depriving women of incomes and property, and making wives the equivalent of slaves.
Marriage has historically been in the domain of the States to regulate.
The Indonesian nationalists, mainly Javanese, who threw the Dutch out - in 1949, after a four-year struggle - were keen to preserve their inheritance and emulated the coercion, deceit, and bribery of the colonial rulers.
Marriage is an institution fits in perfect harmony with the laws of nature; whereas systems of slavery and segregation were designed to brutally oppress people and thereby violated the laws of nature.
A married woman has the same natural right to acquire and hold property, and to make all contracts that she is mentally competent to make reasonably, as has a married man, or any other man.
The right to marry is vital in society. It's a right that's older than the Bill of Rights because it goes back to the common law.
The institution of marriage, if you look at it over many centuries, has come and gone.
My wife is Dutch and very independent. She never wanted or needed to be married.