Women have played a major role in the protests since the election in June, which the opposition claims the government of President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad stole. Many women have been jailed and at least several were killed in the government crackdown on street protests that followed the vote.

Women’s rights in Iran have been curtailed since the Islamic Revolution in 1979, but in recent years, women have been displaying an increasing determination to achieve equal status in this conservative Muslim theocracy. Women are forced to cover their hair and they have consistently been subjected to intimidation in public over what they wear.

A group of advocates for women, including Ms. Amini and the Nobel Peace Prize laureate Shirin Ebadi, met with members of the legal committee of Parliament in late 2008 to try to persuade them not to pass the bill. Some advocates thought until last month that they had won the battle, but now they fear conservatives may be using political unrest to push for new restrictions on women.

Articles in the new bill allow a man to marry a new wife without the permission of a current one if she is absent for more than six months, including time served in prison, or has an incurable disease. The bill would also subject a woman’s alimony to a reassessment, although it is vague on what that means. Alimony would, however, be taxed.

Also on Wednesday, an appeals court increased the punishment for Ghader Mohammadzadeh, a Kurdish activist, to death instead of 23 years in prison, a human rights Web site, Reporters and Human Rights Activists News Agency, reported. This is the second time an appeals court has increased the punishment from a prison term to death in recent months, and it appears to be part of a larger crackdown on dissent.