KABUL, Afghanistan -- As Afghanistan began its presidential election campaign several weeks ago, a little-known candidate ignited a nationwide uproar by suggesting that Afghan laws on marriage are unfair to women. Latif Pedram, a leftist writer and philosopher who returned only recently from exile in France , declared on television that polygamy should be banned. He said women should have greater rights in divorce cases.

Conservative Muslim clerics declared that Pedram's remarks were blasphemous because the marital laws are based on long-held interpretations of Islamic scripture. Afghanistan 's senior supreme court judge declared that Pedram had spoken against the Islamic faith and should be disqualified from the presidential race.

As Afghanistan holds elections Saturday in its effort to rebuild after years of civil war and extremist Islamic dictatorship, the international role in restoring the state has helped give women's rights unprecedented national attention and legitimacy. And Afghan women say changes in the three years since the overthrow of the Taliban movement have dramatically improved their lives, letting them move and work more freely.

But in an economy still shattered by 25 years of war and a culture still rigidly dominated by men and tribal traditions, it remains difficult and even dangerous for women to exercise their rights.

In Paktia, Logar, Nangarhar and other Pashtun-dominated provinces, traditional leaflets called "night letters" have appeared in towns and villages, warning people not to vote, in part because a woman's public appearance to do so would be dishonorable. "Your blood is on your own hands if you leave your houses," read a letter in Logar signed in the name of the Taliban, according to Rah-i- Nau, a Kabul newspaper published by women and funded by international aid groups.

A report last month by the monitoring group Human Rights Watch cited a pattern, especially in small towns and villages, of other threats and attacks on women who seek to work, study or travel.

Nationwide, 41 percent of registered voters are women, but in southern provinces dominated by conservative, ethnic Pashtun tribes, women are only 9 percent to 27 percent. More than 1 million girls are again studying in Afghan schools, but this summer UNICEF said it had confirmed 26 violent attacks against schools around the country, most of them girls' schools.

The constitution passed in December guarantees women equality with men, but women's lives will not be changed so easily. About 57 percent of men and 86 percent of women are illiterate. More than half of Afghan girls marry before they reach the age of 16, according to a recent survey by the government and relief agencies.

Women's rights campaigns in Afghanistan have ignited violent reactions. In the 1920s, a young Afghan king named Amanullah banned polygamy and ordered that young girls go to school rather than be married off. Tribal leaders, who have been bastions of conservatism, rose up and forced the king into exile.

In the 1970s, communists seized power in Kabul and tried to enforce policies of greater equality, with help from an invading Soviet army. The tribes rebelled and, after a decade's war, forced the communists out. In the 1990s, the Taliban took power and put women under virtual house arrest, barring them from work or study.

Women's rights activists say they must step cautiously to avoid causing such backlash. Last month, when conservative mullahs attacked Pedram, the presidential candidate, for his remarks on marital law, women's activists did not rush to Pedram's aid. "We have to fight our battles one at a time," said Masooda Jalal, a pediatrician and mother who is the sole woman among the 18 presidential candidates. Like most of Afghanistan 's leading women's rights activists, she is an educated professional who was forced out of her job under the Taliban.

While her candidacy has won a great deal of attention, Jalal, an ethnic Tajik, has not been able to campaign in the most conservative Pashtun areas, where the idea of a woman out of the house and beyond the certain control of her husband is something of a horror.

Women must seize upon Islamic law as an ally, emphasizing provisions that tend to liberate women, rather than let strict conservatives define what Islam says, said Nilab Mobarez, one of two female vice presidential candidates.

But, she added: "We shouldn't provoke. When society is ready to ask the question Pedram asks, the women will ask it by themselves."

Avoiding provocations and choosing the most important battles means accepting some restrictions that Western cultures often portray as backward, the women said. "We must keep the headscarf and our long dresses and pants" and build political capital for more important fights, said Shafiqa Habibi, a journalist who is the other woman running for vice president.

"Above all, we must go for education, to teach our women about their rights and to change the next generation," she said.

The women appear to have no real chance of being elected but say they are running in part to let other women see them taking up politics. "We must do it," Habibi said, "to make other Afghan women courageous" about running and voting in the spring, when Afghanistan will elect a parliament that by law must reserve 25 percent of seats in its lower house for women.

"When I speak somewhere, women come up to me in their burqas and they thank me and kiss my hand and cry," she said.

At a nonprofit bakery in Kabul where the United Nations employs destitute widows, a dozen women sat on the floor Monday, kneading and rolling dough. They work 10-hour days, seven days a week, for the equivalent of 17 cents an hour.

That isn't enough for a family to live on, said Rukiya Ziajan as she shoveled pizza-sized rounds of dough into the oven. Ziajan lost her husband to war and must beg relatives for extra support, but she said she is nonetheless hopeful because she is managing to keep her five children in school. "I am a baker, but they can be doctors," Ziajan said.

And, she said, it is good to see women running for public office in Afghanistan : "Such things were not possible before, but now my children will see that many things are possible."