TEHRAN: Activists fear their hard-fought efforts to improve the status of women in Iran's male-dominated society will be brought to a halt following the triumph of conservatives in February's parliamentary elections.

Led by a determined group of 13 women deputies, the previous reformist-held parliament recorded some small, but important victories for women's rights and ensured the issue got more attention than at any time since the 1979 Islamic revolution.

Reformers were swept aside in the elections which were denounced as a sham by allies of President Mohammad Khatami after thousands of reformist candidates were barred from standing.

The dozen women law makers elected to the new conservative- dominated assembly have already signalled a radical change of tone in comments to local media, advocating the practice of polygamy and opposition to a UN charter on discrimination against women.

"The convention on removing discrimination against women contradicts Islamic Sharia law in some respects," deputy Rafat Bayat was quoted as saying by the parliament's website (www.mellat.majlis.ir).

Female activists, determined to overhaul laws that restrict women's divorce and custody and inheritance rights and forbid them from working or leaving the country without their husband's permission, are dismayed.

"Most of the new deputies regard women as second-class citizens, so they will consider women's issues from that angle and will not acknowledge any right more than that," former lawmaker Fatemeh Haqiqatjou said.

"... Opposing the bill to remove discrimination against women proves the backwardness of these female deputies," said activist Marziyeh Mortazi-Langhroudi. Enforcement of strict moral codes governing women's dress, Western music and mingling of the sexes has become more lax since Khatami's election in 1997 on a platform of social and political reform.

Emboldened young women have steadily tested the barriers of permissible dress, wearing gradually more colourful clothes and more obvious make-up. Iranian women have even tasted freedom on two wheels, cycling down streets in affluent northern Tehran, a practice frowned upon by conservatives.

Unlike some of their predecessors who dared to wear long loose coats and bright scarves to the chamber, the new women deputies wear the all-enveloping black chador advocated by senior clerics to protect female modesty.

One local newspaper reported that the new women deputies would no longer share a lunch table with their male colleagues, as the reformist parliamentarians had done.

Newly-elected women parliamentarians declined to comment to Reuters. The previous reformist parliament improved women's custody rights and raised the legally acceptable age of marriage for girls to 15 from nine.

But several other bills, such as reforms to women's inheritance rights and adoption of the UN charter on discrimination, have been held up or blocked by the Guardian Council - a constitutional watchdog run by the hardliners.

A woman's testimony and life, in blood money terms, are worth half that of a man's in court. A woman still cannot become president and is entitled to half the inheritance due to a man.

Activists say the new law makers cannot afford to put women's demands on the back burner in a country where two-thirds of the population is under 30 and more than 60 per cent of university graduates are women. -Reuters