Muninggar Sri Saraswati – Shariah-inspired laws have increased discrimination against women, a new report by the National Commission for the Protection of Women, or Komnas Perempuan, indicates.

The report, released during a discussion at the Constitutional Court building on Monday, covered bylaws issued by 69 district and municipal administrations in 21 provinces.

Komnas Perempuan chairwoman Kamala Chandra Kirana said as many as 64 bylaws "discriminate against women directly."

Of those laws, 21 governed how women could dress, while another 38 laws on prostitution attacked women's individual freedoms, she said. "We call this the institutionalization of discrimination because state institutions become the initiators and enforcers of the discriminatory actions against people, particularly women," she said.

In 2007, the Tangerang municipality west of Jakarta in Banten Province stirred controversy for issuing a bylaw on prostitution that banned women from going outside of their homes after 10 p.m.

That bylaw has resulted in the arrest of women who simply work at night. An appeal to the Supreme Court to annul the bylaw, however, was rejected.

The administration of Gowa district in South Sulawesi Province issued a similar bylaw that it claimed was meant to curb prostitution. The regulation forbade women from walking alone outside their homes after 12 p.m. without being accompanied by their husbands or male relatives.

A number of districts, includings West Pasaman, Solok and Padang in West Sumatra Province as well as Tasikmalaya in West Java Province, have issued bylaws requiring female students or female Muslims to wear Muslim attire and head scarves.

The local laws are enforced by local public order officers, often in conjunction with police.

Komnas Perempuan has asked the Ministry of Home Affairs to examine the bylaws because the regulations could result in the labeling of women as "immoral" if they returned home late at night or wore form-fitting clothes.

Most of the discriminatory bylaws were issued by administrations advocating the implementation of Shariah law. That trend followed efforts to shift power from the central government to regional authorities as part of democratic reforms that started after the fall of former President Suharto in 1998.

Last year, the Constitutional Court called on the government to scrap discriminatory bylaws because they violated the country's ideological document, the Pancasila, which protects diversity.

Responding to the call, the Ministry of Home Affairs indicated in November last year that it would review bylaws considered to be discriminatory. However, it has yet to issue results from that review.