French lawmakers back bill to end 'marital duty'

French lawmakers on Wednesday unanimously approved a bill seeking to end "marital duty", after criticism from women's rights groups about its use to ignore sexual consent in marriage and marital rape.

The text -- backed by more than 120 MPs in the lower house National Assembly -- clarifies in the civil code that cohabitation does not create any obligation for spouses to have sexual relations.

The cross-party bill will now have to go through the Senate upper chamber.

The French civil code lists four duties attached to marriage -- fidelity, support, assistance and cohabitation -- but it does not mention sexual obligation.

However, older court rulings sometimes interpreted cohabitation as implying a "shared bed", allowing the idea of a "marital duty" to persist in practice.

In 2019, a man obtained a divorce in France on the grounds that his wife had stopped having sex with him.

Last year, Europe's top rights court ruled in favour of his ex-wife, saying a woman who refuses to have sex with her husband should not be considered "at fault" by courts in the event of divorce.

France last year adopted the principle of consent into the definition of the crime of rape, following other European countries like the Netherlands, Spain and Sweden.