Such is shame and contempt towards the feminine in Afghanistan, that some mothers prefer believe and make the world believe that they have had a child cutting their hair and dressing their daughters as boys. There is a deep-rooted and pervasive social perception in Afghanistan that as long as you do not raise a man, you are nothing, you are worthless. The newspaper The Courier He explains this reality to us in an article.
They are called 'bacha posh', dressed as a child in Dari language. They are invented children. Only when they reach puberty and the girls are marriageable and can get something out of them (financial aid from their husbands, etc.), do they allow them to regain their identity and become women again.
But if this were not enough, the drama goes further. They grow up enjoying the privileges of being a man in Afghanistan: they receive an education, they can go alone on the street, dress as they want, play, laugh, do whatever they want, say whatever they want. But when they reach adolescence, they lose all these privileges. From one day to the next, without further explanation than "now you are a woman, you must behave feminine, you must wear a burqa, marry this man, give him children and never open your mouth again. You must be invisible.
There is a belief that reinforces this practice. If the family dresses a girl as a child, luck will cause a mother to shine in a future pregnancy. Religious leaders turn a blind eye faced with this situation and families seem to practice it widely and accept it as a natural and healthy practice in a society clearly ill.
Some 'bacha posh' have ensured that being raised as a child increased self-esteem in childhood and served them to become independent women, with a satisfactory education, work and lives. But in other cases, the fear of only giving birth to girls and that their husbands will abandon them or take another wife, leads many women to feel an immense insecurity and fear. This feeling ends up victimizing his daughters and turning them into a 'posh pothole'. For a woman without a husband in Afghanistan is even more invisible and despicable than a married woman.
(Article via The Courier: The Afghan child girls)
