Afghanistan International: In the video, the girl says she was compelled to work in order to protect and support her sisters. The phenomenon of girls dressing as boys was also common during the Taliban’s first period of rule in Afghanistan. Afghan filmmaker Siddiq Barmak later portrayed this reality in the film Osama, which tells the
AP: In Afghanistan’s heavily patriarchal, male-dominated society, where women and girls are usually relegated to the home, bacha posh, Dari for “dressed as a boy,” is the one tradition allowing girls access to the freer male world. Click here to read more (external link).
AFP: With five sisters and no brothers, Sitara lives by the gender-twisting custom known as “bacha poshi”, which in Dari refers to a girl “dressed as a boy”, enabling her to safely perform the duties of a son in the patriarchal country. The 18-year-old, who resides with her impoverished family in a mud-brick house in a