In Kyrgyzstan – one of the few places to collect data – the practice has been on the increase since the fall of communism. Some believe this violent subversion of a tradition (which was historically for show and done with the consent of the wife) has become popular to avoid the embarrassment of being unable to afford a dowry.
Up to a third of all ethnic Kyrgyz women in Kyrgyzstan are kidnapped brides, and some studies suggest that, in certain regions, the rates of bride kidnapping account for up to 80 per cent of marriages.
In six villages scrutinised for a recent survey, almost half of the 1322 marriages registered were from bride kidnapping, and up to two-thirds were non-consensual.
…”Once bride kidnapping was characteristic mostly in rural areas, but it has become widespread everywhere, including the capital, Bishkek,” says Gazbubu Babayarova, founder of the Kyz Korgon Institute, an organisation that campaigns to eliminate bridenapping in Kyrgyzstan.Most people in Kyrgyzstan view the practice as a tradition rather than a crime. There is such a thing as “consensual” bridenapping, where the bride agrees to be taken as part of a custom, but a more violent version of this “tradition” has grown in the 21st century.
Russell Kleinbach, a professor at Philadelphia University who is an expert on the issue, believes it is only since the 1950s that this tradition has morphed into something that is widespread, brutal and non-consensual.
Ms Babayarova is herself an example of how this custom has spread to urban, educated Kyrgyz communities.
Seven years ago, she was kidnapped by one of her closest friends, who was a medical student. He did not accept her protestations that she did not want anything more than friendship and entered into an arrangement with both their parents to kidnap her.
The rest of the story is here.
“…has become popular to avoid the embarrassment of being unable to afford a dowry.”
That sentence doesn’t make compute, nor is it supported by any other facts or anecdotes in the full story. The families of the girls are the ones who “suffer the embarrassment of being unable to afford a dowry,” yet not a single sentence anywhere else in the full story suggests that these kidnappings tend to be arranged by them.
Oops. “…doesn’t compute…”
Perhaps confusing the concepts of dowry and bride price.
“The same culture may simultaneously practice both dowry and bride price” (from Wikipedia article on dowry)
Offer your target’s parents a way to marry off their daughter without embarrassment and they’ll help you kidnap her?
“He did not accept her protestations that she did not want anything more than friendship and entered into an arrangement with BOTH their parents to kidnap her”
Read the last little bit of the excerpt.
Perhaps the article is confusing the concepts of dowry and bride price.
“A dowry (also known as trousseau or tocher or, in Latin, dos) is the money, goods, or estate that a woman brings forth to the marriage.[1][2] It contrasts with bride price, which is paid to the bride’s parents, and dower, which is property settled on the bride herself by the groom at the time of marriage. The same culture may simultaneously practice both dowry and bride price. Dowry is an ancient custom, and its existence may well predate records of it.”
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dowry
If agreed upon in advance, bridenapping can provide an out for all the parents, the bride and the groom. The parents can marry their daughter off to someone who the community or extended family may disapprove of, but who nonetheless may be her best suitor. Both sets of parents can avoid an expensive, planned wedding celebration, the cost of which can exceed a family’s annual income in Central Asia. The groom and his parents can avoid the bride price. The bride and groom, if in a star-crossed lovers situation, can get married even without prior approval from their families. Once the bride has been “kidnapped” it is usually viewed quite negatively for her to come back home. Also, it can sometimes happen under shotgun wedding circumstances.
Having lived in Kyrgyzstan for 4 months, this practice seemed surprisingly widespread and accepted. More disturbing (to me) was that the kidnapped bride, whether consensual or not, would essentially take over all household duties from the groom’s female relatives and would often be forbidden from contacting her family ever again. The process of kidnapping usually involved a somewhat violent taking of the woman, a car ride to the groom’s house and the transfer of the woman into the hands of these female relatives who would persistently attempt to force the woman to wear a white headscarf, and upon acquiescence, the wedding would happen and the woman would become keilin (daughter in law charged with all household work). On the surface, few women who had been kidnapped viewed the practice as anything other than quirky, though many of my American female colleagues would hear the dreadful and sad reality from the kidnapped in private.
The article itself also mentions the same practice becoming more common in China, due to the increasing gender imbalance in the population.
Usually when the effects of this imbalance are discussed somewhere there are many clever people saying that it is really not so bad, because – obviously – women will thus gain negotiating power as they become more ‘valuable’ as mates.
How depressing, albeit unsurprising, that this apparent increase in value falls not to the women, but the men who are hired to kidnap them. For $200.
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