who remarried have been accused of bigamy (with
severe legal and social consequences for them and
their families) by the erstwhile husbands who have
denied divorcing them. Thus an end to oral divorce
has been a major demand by women in both soci-
eties. Under Iran’s modern, centralized state there is
compulsory registration of marriage and divorce
and a resulting diminution of oral divorce. How-
ever, in Afghanistan, after two decades of war and
the destruction of state institutions, the limited
gains women had secured have almost totally evap-
orated. Thus oral divorce and, worse yet, lack of
obligation on the part of the husband to ever com-
municate the divorce to the wife has seriously com-
promised women in Afghan society.
Although recent reforms in Iran have increased
the possibility for women to obtain divorce if they
can prove domestic abuse or severe addiction, the
long and often costly procedure as well as the un-
welcoming atmosphere discourages women from
using these channels. They often, in effect, buy their
divorce and occasionally the custody of their chil-
dren by making their husband an offer. This kind of
divorce is called khul≠and traditionally women
would give up their mahr, the gift that at marriage
a husband pledges to give to his wife as a part of the
marriage contract. As a counter strategy, increas-
ingly husbands are demanding much more than the
mahr, assuming they do not refuse the divorce out-
right. In some ethnic groups, such as the Pashtuns
and Persians, a bride’s family will tend to demand a
more substantial although deferred mahras a sort
of marriage security for the bride. Among many
other ethnic groups the mahrremains a small nom-
inal sum and sometimes is paid to the father of the
bride at the time of marriage. Nonetheless these
culturally grounded strategies partially explain why
women and their families in Afghanistan resisted
attempts by the government in 1978 to limit the
mahrto 300 Afghanis (US$5 today), particularly
since there were few other mechanisms in place to
protect women against abuses by the husband and
his family. Indeed, Iranian women launched a suc-
cessful public campaign to bring about a law that
allowed for the mahrto be reassessed at the time of
payment by taking inflation into account. An ear-
lier campaign had made it compulsory for men to
pay wages for the housework that women had per-
formed during the years of marriage before hus-
bands could legally divorce their wives. An obstacle
to realizing these options has been that many
Afghan women and some Iranian women have no
marriage certificate, or the certificate does not stip-
ulate the mahr, thus limiting women’s leverage.
A final ploy for women has been to take advan-106 divorce and custody: contemporary practices
tage of the long-existing marriage contracts and to
insert various useful clauses including an uncondi-
tional right of divorce. This strategy is rapidly
becoming popular and is viewed by many women
as the main vehicle to help them become more equal
partners in their marriages. It could be argued that
the above are cosmetic reforms that neither satisfy
women’s demands nor question the fundamentally
unequal nature of divorce and custody laws. They
nonetheless have increased many women’s negoti-
ating power in obtaining a divorce.Bibliography
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change in the Middle East, Boulder, Colo. 1993.Homa HoodfarSouth AsiaAcross South Asia there are many commonalities
regarding marriage and divorce as they affect
women. These arise out of a common cultural
familial kinship pattern in many parts of the region
and the common historical experiences regarding
the development of Muslim personal law. There
have been divergences in the development of family
law during the last 50 years in India, Pakistan, and
Bangladesh but on the whole the experiences of
women regarding divorce are alike. This is because
the expectations regarding gender roles in the soci-
ety, the relation between wife-givers and wife-tak-
ers and the responsibilities incumbent on each with
reference to marriage, especially the exchanges at