She has disguised herself as a boy for more than a decade. Sitara Wafadar has done so because of her parents, who have no ‘son’. Sitara lives by the gender-twisting custom known as ‘Bacha Poshi’ – a girl “dressed as a boy” – in Afghanistan. The change of identity allows her to perform the duties of a son safely in the patriarchal South Asian country.
Sitara, along with her parents and four sisters, lives in a mud-brick house in a village in eastern Afghan province of Nangarhar. In ‘conservative’ Nangarhar province, boys are valued more highly than girls. As a result, ‘Bacha Poshi’ has become a popular custom there.
Kabul University Sociology Professor Baryalai Fetrat has said that Bacha Poshi tends to be followed in “particularly conservative areas”. He explained that although most “Bacha Posh” (as they are known) stop dressing as a boy after attending puberty, others don’t do so. After years of dressing as a boy, some girls are left feeling confused about their gender identity and social status in the male-dominated Afghan society.

Sitara is one of them. The 18-year-old, who started working at a brick-manufacturing factory at the age of eight, said: “If they realised that a girl was working morning to evening in a brick factory, then I would encounter many problems. I could even be kidnapped.” Talking to media persons, Sitara also said that she covers her face with a scarf and deepens her voice mainly to conceal her real gender. “I never think that I am a girl. My father always says ‘Sitara is like my eldest son’. Sometimes… I attend funerals as his eldest son,” she stressed.
Unfortunately, the ‘son’ of Sitara’s father has (so far) failed to earn enough money for her family. She makes 500 bricks a day in return for just over USD 2. It has become really difficult for her family to repay USD 354.47500 (or AFN 25,000) to the factory owner and relatives that they borrowed to cover the medical expenses of Sitara’s diabetic mother. So, it’s not possible for her to leave the job.

But, what is the main problem girls face after hiding their identity for long? “Girls find it difficult to go back to their normal self or act as a submissive wife to their husbands, which can lead to depression and also domestic violence,” answered Professor Fetrat.

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Published by Koushik Das

Koushik Das (born on May 16, 1976 in Kolkata) is a career journalist. Based in the Indian capital of New Delhi, Koushik writes mainly about foreign policies and current geopolitical issues, and rarely about other topics. His own political ideas are highly influenced by Antonio Gramsci, Louis Althusser, Michel Foucault, Michael Oakeshott and others. English philosopher and political theorist Oakeshott (Dec 11, 1901-Dec 19, 1990) says that “in political activity, men sail a boundless and bottomless sea. There is neither harbour for shelter nor floor for anchorage, neither starting-place, nor appointed destination. But we have to keep afloat”. (Rationalism in Politics, 1962) As a student of Political Science, Koushik loves to share his views on issues, which have great impacts on his thought process (and also on India, South Asia and of course on the global community), with his readers through his website – Boundless Ocean of Politics. By doing so, he tries to keep himself afloat. You will find some of his articles in https://inserbia.info/today/ (https://inserbia.info/today/author/kou_das13_i/), as he has been trying to assess the global geopolitics since 2003. You can also mail him at kousdas@gmail.com View all posts by Koushik Das