It’s a law that gives a whole new meaning to curves in the road.

In Indonesia’s conservative Aceh province, an Islamist government has put women on notice that female passengers cannot straddle motorbikes because the “curves of a woman’s body” are too alluring unless they sit sidesaddle.

“Muslim women are not allowed to show their curves; it’s against Islamic teachings,” the mayor of the Aceh city of Lhokseumawe told the Associated Press on Monday.

The energy-rich northern province adopted Sharia law in 2009, after it won autonomy from the Indonesian government in a bitter separatist war. It imposed strict morality laws that regulate women’s dress, require shops to close at prayer time and other measures

Indonesia is the world’s most populous Muslim nation, and some of its regions are increasingly stringent in applying religion-based laws. But it pales in comparison with Saudi Arabia, where women are lifelong dependants of men, must be covered in public from head to foot and cannot drive cars, let alone motorcycles.

Protests against the clerically imposed driving ban have not changed the rules. But laws that give women no rights over their homes, property, marriage or children are more onerous. Virtually all major decisions in a woman’s life must be made with the consent of men — not only fathers or husbands, but sons.

In Iran, where women’s rights were already curtailed by the clerical regime, they have shrunk further in the past few years.

Unable to divorce their husbands, women also lose custody of their children if they are ousted from the family. Adultery is punished by flogging or death.

Although women make up more than half of university students, their access to courses has been limited. Married women can only travel with their husbands’ approval, and lawmakers are debating a new law to restrict the movement of single women under 40.

Rules that allow marriage of adolescents and children under 16 are rife in many countries in Africa, as well as Iran. But in Bangladesh, some 75 per cent of marriages are of underage girls. Nicaragua leads Latin America with 53 per cent.

In the Philippines, girls as young as 12 can marry, according to the UN’s high commissioner for human rights.

Control over women’s lives is legally enshrined in the Democratic Republic of Congo, where a married woman is “under the authority of her husband” and must follow him to wherever he chooses to live.

India, though a democracy, makes protection of women’s rights a low priority — as evidenced in the recent gang rape and murder of an Indian medical student. It was ranked the worst place among G20 countries to be a woman last year in a poll of global experts.

There are also limits to the liberating effect of technology in India. In a village east of the capital of the rapidly developing Bihar state, women are barred from using mobile phones, which a local morality committee says are “debasing the social atmosphere” and encouraging restless girls and married women to elope.

Western countries score much more highly on women’s freedom. But in the U.S., where religiously motivated politicians have waged campaigns against abortion and contraception, women have lost ground. Last month the governors of Michigan and Virginia signed bills that put new restrictions on clinics offering abortions.

Although Canada scores highest on G20 polls, and has freer access to abortion and birth control, it has actually slid in other ways over the past decade, says Kathleen Lahey, a Queen’s University law professor who has analyzed the 2012 federal budget’s effects on women.

“We’ve gone backward in ways that are difficult to see, but their impact on women is stunning,” she says, noting that the UN’s sex equality rating showed that Canada had plunged from first to 20th place since 1999.

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Budgetary cuts that began with the Liberal government have continued to the detriment of economically disadvantaged women, Lahey said. Under the Harper government, she adds, “it’s almost as if every change that has been put into place in tax rules, OAS (Old Age Security) cuts and others have ended up in forms that have a maximum negative impact on women. There are huge income gaps between men and women, so raising the OAS coverage (age) to 67 would affect them the most.”

Groups that promote women’s equality — as well as advocacy organizations for victims of violence — have also suffered funding cuts.

With files from Star wire services

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