The changes, which parliament is expected to approve, most likely reflect a calculation by President Hamid Karzai that his reputation as a reformer is more important than support from conservative Shiites who favored the original bill.

Presidential spokesman Humayun Hamidzada said the revisions showed that Karzai had followed through on an April pledge to expunge the offensive parts of the marriage law, which applies only to minority Shiite Muslims.

Women's-rights activists welcomed the new draft, but many said that the government had not done enough and that little would change in day-to-day life.

"This is just on paper," said Shukria Barakzai, a lawmaker and vocal women's-rights advocate. "What is being practiced every day, in Kabul even, is worse than the laws."

Karzai signed the original law in March but quickly suspended enforcement after international criticism. President Obama labeled the original version "abhorrent." A host of academics and politicians signed a petition condemning the law, and women took to the streets in protest.

Karzai said that he had not read the law before signing it and that his cabinet advisers had signed off on a version that did not include articles requiring a woman to ask her husband's permission to leave the house. But those articles ended up in the draft he signed, as was a provision ordering wives to offer sex with their spouses at least every four days unless they were ill.

The latter article now requires only that a wife do whatever household chores the couple agreed to when they wed; it does not try to regulate sexual relations. The requirement that a wife ask permission to leave the house was also deleted.