On the eve of International Women’s Day, President Hamid Karzai has given Afghan women an unwelcome present: the message that they are second-class citizens.

In remarks made Tuesday, Karzai backed a “code of conduct” written by the Ulema Council of 150 leading Muslim clerics. It could dramatically restrict women’s daily lives and threaten a return to the dark days of Taliban rule.

“Men are fundamental and women are secondary,” the council said in its statement released last week, and later published on Karzai’s own website.

The move appears aimed at enticing the Taliban into the peace process — but also gives pause to Canada and other countries that have supported efforts to advance women’s rights in the land they fought to take back from the extremists.

“These reports are of serious concern to Canada,” said a statement from Joseph Lavoie, press secretary to Foreign Affairs Minister John Baird. “We call on the Government of Afghanistan to uphold the provisions of Afghanistan’s constitution, which establishes equal rights for men and women, and to respect its obligations under international law.”

Since 2002, 158 Canadian soldiers have died in Afghanistan.

The Ulema Council’s code is part of a general framework for political issues. It was described as “voluntary” for women who are devout, and not legally binding.

It says women should not travel without a male guardian or mingle with men in public places such as schools, offices or markets. It also allows wife-beating in the case of a “sharia-compliant” reason, although it rejects forced marriage and the bartering of women to settle disputes.

In Kabul, Karzai said that the council had not put “any limitations” on women, and that it was only stating “the sharia law of all Muslims and all Afghans.” But some Muslim scholars have disputed the clerics’ strict interpretation.

“We want the correct Islam, not the Islam of politics,” activist Fatana Ishaq Gailani, a founder of the Afghanistan Women’s Council, told reporters in Kabul.

Before the 2001 invasion, Afghan women were confined to their homes and forced to wear burkas. Girls were not allowed to go to school, and females could not get medical attention from male doctors.

Since then women have made large strides, returning to work and school, starting businesses and taking part in the political process. But their lives are frequently at risk, and have become more difficult as security has frayed in recent months.

“Sixty-five per cent of the population is under the age of 25, and young women are not prepared to take it any more,” says Toronto author and journalist Sally Armstrong, who has written on Afghan women’s rights. “They are brave, and they march in the street. The message is ‘Karzai must go.’”

Karzai has been backtracking on women’s rights in recent years, as Western countries began to roll up their military operations. By 2014, most will have left the country, although they have pledged to continue support for its development.

“Karzai is between a rock and a hard place,” says Mark Sedra, an adjunct lecturer at University of Waterloo who studies Afghanistan. “He doesn’t want to end up like (Soviet-backed president Mohammad) Najibullah, who was left hanging from a lamp post,” years after the Soviet troops withdrew.

Other factions besides the Taliban are deeply conservative, Sedra added, and Karzai needs their support.

“It makes political sense to him to make these statements. He may be ridiculed in the West, but his position is tenuous now.”

That bodes ill for women, who will also have a harder struggle if Islamist factions gain ground.

“They will continue protesting,” said Armstrong. “They are raped, killed for producing girl children, beaten and harassed. They don’t have anything to lose.”