There’s probably not a society in the world that is truly equal, that treats everyone the same without regard to characteristics such as gender, race, ethnicity, or sexual orientation. However, some societies are certainly more unequal than others, and members of those societies are often the ones that protest most loudly that just because some people are treated differently or separately on the basis of some characteristic doesn’t mean they are treated unequally or unfairly.
Here’s a good test to apply in such cases. Let’s say everyone in a society is classified into one of two groups, A or B. If you observe large numbers of people from group B passing themselves off as members of group A, but not similar numbers of group A passing themselves off as members of group B, that’s a pretty good indication that members of group A are favored in the society. Why would people pretend on a daily basis to be something or someone that they are not, except to have access to privileges they could not have without the deception?
In the United States, we have seen this inequality play out in racial terms. While people of mixed African and European heritage have sometimes chosen to pass as white (a topic explored in Allyson Hobbs’ A Chosen Exile: A History of Racial Exile, there’s no corresponding history of people of European heritage choosing to pass as black (John Howard Griffin’s temporary experience of blackness, for journalistic purposes, notwithstanding). In Afghanistan, the same principle is behind the societal custom of bacha posh — girls raised as boys until they reach the age of marriage.
Jenny Nordberg’s The Underground Girls of Kabul: In Search of a Hidden Resistance in Afghanistan, the first in-depth examination of bacha posh, offers a fascinating exploration of a social phenomenon that is widely practiced and yet not documented in official narratives of the country’s history and culture. When Nordberg, a Swedish journalist based in New York, questioned the many “gender experts” from the foreign aid community who converged on Afghanistan after the fall of the Taliban about bacha posh, she was met with disbelief and dismissal and told that surely if such a phenomenon existed, the scientific and policy community would already know about it.
Fortunately, Nordberg didn’t accept the “wisdom” offered by the experts, but relied instead on her own observation, which told her that girls raised as boys not only existed, but were not particularly uncommon. In investigating the phenomenon of bacha posh, she also uncovered layers of gender inequality in Afghan society, with the purpose not of condemning Afghanistan but rather to argue that outsiders who think they know what is best for this country should at least inform themselves of its realities, rather than relying on received information from other outsiders.
In Afghanistan, passing off a daughter as a son is easier than it might seem. Bacha posh literally means “dressed like a boy”, and in a country with sex roles so sharply defined, you are accepted as what you appear to be. The first bacha posh Nordberg encounters is Mehran, a six-year-old boy with tanned features and a confident swagger who enjoys playing with toy guns and superhero figures. Imagine Nordberg’s surprise when Mehran’s twin sisters inform her that “Our brother is really a girl.”
This startling revelation proves more understandable as Nordberg begins to uncover many reasons why parents would choose to present a girl as a boy, and why some girls would prefer to pass as a boy than to conform to the role expectations imposed upon girls. As an Afghan boy, one can climb trees, play sports, go out without an escort, hold an after school job, speak up and expect to be listened to, laugh out loud, and generally exist in the world free of the constant scrutiny and monitoring that is the lot of Afghan girls. As a boy, one can even tap male privilege to insult adult women, acting as a junior member of the gender police whose right to judge women and girls seems to be unlimited.
The birth of a boy also brings honor to the mother, while a woman who bears only daughters is seen as fundamentally flawed. A family with no sons is viewed as incomplete as best and as weak and vulnerable at worst. This is the motivation of Mehran’s mother, Azita, to present one of her daughters as a son; she is a member of Parliament and fears her political career would be damaged if people knew that she had no sons.
Other parents choose to raise daughters as sons because they need the added income that a boy, but not a girl, can earn from a job. Many bacha posh girls embrace their freedom as boys and regret having to give it up when they become of marriageable age. Still, they retain the social skills gained during their years of freedom, as well as the knowledge that gender does not need to equal destiny. Neither point is lost on Azita, a former bacha posh herself, who believes that her years of freedom gave her the strength to survive a very difficult marital situation and become a woman of influence on Afghanistan.
The Underground Girls of Kabul is an outstanding work of journalism that uncovers new information about an important subject. It’s also an extraordinarily well-written book, full of riveting stories about the real lives of girls and women in Afghanistan today.