Initiation of divorce

The ability to end a marriage is an important facet of women's rights. Women frequently could not dissolve their marriages on their own initiative because of the economic conditions that bound them. If they divorced, they had to give back the kalym (bride-money) as decided by the court of biy in Kyrgyz in the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries. A woman had the right to divorce through the court in the following cases: the husband was incapable of pe…