Question: Were patriot women allowed to legally divorce their husbands?
About the article "American Revolution", section "Role of women".

Candidate passages:
Spartan women were allowed to divorce their husbands without fear of losing their personal wealth.
As equal citizens of the community, women could divorce and were not required to or discouraged from remarrying.
The unique family unit of Sparta also did not force the woman to relinquish her children, as biological paternity was not important in raising the children.
Boys were already taken into "agoge" and girls would have felt a strong connection to the mother. 
In the Edo Period (1603–1868), only husbands could divorce their wives by writing letters of divorce.
But actually, their relatives or marriage arrangers often kept these letters and tried to restore the marriages.
It was not allowed for wives to divorce their husbands.
Some wives were able to gain sanctuary in certain Shinto "divorce temples" for several years, and were able to obtain a divorce thereby.
In 19th century Japan, at least one in eight marriages ended in divorce.
There are four types of divorce in Japan: Divorce by agreement in which the divorce is mutual, divorce by mediation which happens in family court, divorce by decision of family court that takes place when a couple cannot complete a divorce through mediation, and divorce by judgment of district court. 
The Marriage Law of 1950 empowered women to initiate divorce proceedings.
According to Elaine Jeffreys, an Australian Research Council Future Fellow and Associate Professor in China studies, divorce requests were only granted if they were justified by politically proper reasons.
These requests were mediated by party-affiliated organizations, rather than discredited legal systems.
Ralph Haughwout Folsom, a professor of Chinese law, international trade, and international business transactions at the University of San Diego, and, John H. Minan, a trial attorney in the Civil Division of the U.S. Department of Justice and a law professor at the University of San Diego, argue that the Marriage Law of 1950 allowed for much flexibility in the refusal of divorce when only one party sought it.
During the market-based economic reforms, China re-instituted a formal legal system and implemented provisions for divorce on a more individualized basis.
Jeffreys asserts that the Marriage Law of 1980 provided for divorce on the basis that emotions or mutual affections were broken.
As a result of the more liberal grounds for divorce, the divorce rates soared As women began divorcing their husbands, tensions increased and much resistance was met from rural males.
Although divorce was now legally recognized, thousands of women lost their lives for attempting to divorce their husbands and some committed suicide when the right to divorce was withheld.
Divorce, once seen as a rare act during the Mao era(1949–1976), has become more common with rates continuing to increase today.
Along with this increase in divorce, it became evident that divorced women were often given an unfair share or housing and property.
The amended Marriage Law of 2001, which according to Jeffreys was designed to protect women’s rights, provided a solution to this problem by reverting to a “moralistic fault-based system with a renewed focus on collectivist mechanisms to protect marriage and family.” Although all property acquired during a marriage was seen as jointly-held,it was not until the implementation of Article 46 of the 2001 Marriage Law that the concealment of joint property was punishable.
This was enacted to ensure a fair division during a divorce.
The article also granted the right for a party to request compensation from a spouse who committed illegal cohabitation, bigamy, and family violence or desertion.
The lack of public awareness of the 2005 amendment has allowed spousal abuse to persist.
There was a significant increase in the prevalence of domestic violence in the People's Republic of China involving Chinese women committing violence against Chinese men.
In 2003, 10 percent of violence in families involved male victims.
The wives beat their husbands, and some cut off their penises.
In Wuxi in Jiangsu province a man had his penis cut off by his wife.
An article titled "Status Quo of Female Criminals in Nanjing" was translated on the All-China Women’s Federation's website on July 21, 2008, concerning the rise in young female criminals over the previous three years, numbering 2,140 and mostly Aged 35 or younger.
Under "Crime Caused by Impulsion", it stated that several incidents in Nanjing in China occurred where Chinese men had their penis severed by their wives.
An explanation given by a procurator said, "Their reasons are simple.
The wife could not bear the fact that her husband is gambling or cheating on her.
It is a crime of impulsion in an emotional crisis."
The majority of the women criminals in Nanjing were given lenient jail time or not punished at all. 
Despite the increasingly democratic view of wine, its use by women was frowned upon or even prohibited.
In Greek and Roman comedies, women were often portrayed as drunkards and more likely to indulge in vices while under wine's influence.
The poet Juvenal noted in his "Satires" that, "When she is drunk, what matters to the Goddess of Love?
She cannot tell her groin from her head" (6.300–301).
Women were also the most noted participants in the cult of Bacchus, which the Roman Senate outlawed in 186 BC for impropriety.
Husbands were legally allowed to kill or divorce their wives if caught committing such an offense.
One Roman myth had Egnatius Mecenius beating his wife to death with a stick for drinking wine, his virtue garnering praise from Romulus himself.
Another myth told of a woman sentenced to starve to death by her family for having opened the purse containing the keys to the wine cellars.
The last recorded divorce for this offense was granted in 194 BC: the 1st century BC witnessed more tolerant attitudes as wine came to be seen more frequently as a dietary staple. 
In Lao society, women who divorce their husbands are traditionally stigmatised, often finding it difficult to find another spouse.