I just read this in print.. it is the front page article in NYTimes today.

Read @ NYTimes.com

In Afghanistan, Boys Are Prized and Girls Live the Part

KABUL, Afghanistan — Six-year-old Mehran Rafaat is like many girls her age. She likes to be the center of attention. She is often frustrated when things do not go her way. Like her three older sisters, she is eager to discover the world outside the family’s apartment in their middle-class neighborhood of Kabul.

But when their mother, Azita Rafaat, a member of Parliament, dresses the children for school in the morning, there is one important difference. Mehran’s sisters put on black dresses and head scarves, tied tightly over their ponytails. For Mehran, it’s green pants, a white shirt and a necktie, then a pat from her mother over her spiky, short black hair. After that, her daughter is out the door — as an Afghan boy.

[snip]

Afghan families have many reasons for pretending their girls are boys, including economic need, social pressure to have sons, and in some cases, a superstition that doing so can lead to the birth of a real boy. Lacking a son, the parents decide to make one up, usually by cutting the hair of a daughter and dressing her in typical Afghan men’s clothing. There are no specific legal or religious proscriptions against the practice. In most cases, a return to womanhood takes place when the child enters puberty. The parents almost always make that decision.

Continues @ NYTimes.com

The author of this article can be contacted at bachaposh [at] gmail [dot] com.
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And, I am dismayed by what it might do to the self-esteem of the kid.

As parents the best gift we leave our children is a whole sense of self and self-esteem. There is no greater gift. Everything else we give them, including education is towards that.

So, I truly hope that this is not being done for the parents to feed their sense of what gender is a better child.. or their misguided need to dress up a kid in boys' clothes... the kid is not a toy.

If the sacrifice they are making to give the kid education is a mega discounting of their sense of their gender, it must be a heart-wrenching decision.

Imagine growing up as a hidden boy... you have a sense of guilt (perhaps?) against society -   a sense that you are hiding something - and thankfully happily living the carefree life of a boy that you may or may not know is short-lived (at least during the very young ages you would not know) -- and then changing to become an oppressed woman.  You are totally unprepared for this new life.  You now have to readjust to society in a way you have not known.  It is worse than moving to a foreign country.. although that is quite close in comparison, to be honest!!


-- Edited by Sanders on Tuesday 21st of September 2010 08:12:00 AM