Bacha posh

Reasons for the choice

Afghan society places heavy value on having male offspring to inherit family property and preserve the family name. Households with only daughters can face social stigma or feel unprotected. To counter this, parents may designate a daughter to take on the male role. Some parents also hold a traditional belief that raising a bacha posh will encourage the birth of a baby boy in a future pregnancy. In other cases, a daughter is chosen to provide wage income or accompany her mother and sisters outside the home, where women cannot travel alone. If a girl naturally displays active or tomboy traits, she is often selected.

Daily life and dress

A girl living as a bacha posh receives a boy's haircut, wears typical male clothes, and adopts a male name. Her domestic duties change completely: unlike her sisters, she is excused from cooking and housecleaning. Instead, she enters the male sphere of public life. She can attend school, work jobs, run errands across town, play soccer and cricket, and ride bicycles. Her presence as a male guardian allows her sisters and mother to travel in public spaces. Close relatives, family friends, and local teachers usually understand her situation, but the wider community treats her as a boy without openly discussing her sex.

Transition to womanhood

The boy identity usually ends between the ages of fifteen and seventeen, as physical puberty arrives and the young person reaches marriageable age. Fathers commonly decide when to revert the child to female life. This change can prove difficult and stressful. Having grown used to male freedoms and social circles, many find it painful to adjust to domestic isolation and female clothing. Because they missed learning domestic skills expected of young brides, some feel anxiety about marriage. Some families relocate to a new area when a daughter resumes female life so her previous identity remains quiet and avoids local gossip.

Origins and history

The roots of bacha posh go back more than a century and are likely much older. Historian Nancy Dupree noted an early twentieth-century photograph from the rule of Habibullah Khan showing female guards disguised in male clothing at the royal harem, where neither ordinary men nor women were permitted to stand guard. Disguising women as men may also have emerged during wartime periods as a protective measure or to allow them to take up arms. While it remained little known outside the region for generations, recent books, documentaries, and films have brought the practice to international attention.

How Bacha posh is kept

A family without sons selects a young daughter, cuts her hair short, gives her male garments, and calls her by a boy's name. She steps into the duties of an eldest or only son, working outside, shopping in markets, going to school, and escorting her female kin. Community members discreetly accept her boyish presentation. When she approaches puberty or marriageable age around fifteen to seventeen, her family directs her to grow her hair, put on female dress, and resume life as a woman.

When and where

The custom is not tied to a calendar date. It begins in early childhood whenever a family decides to raise a daughter as a boy, and it continues until the child enters adolescence and reaches marriageable age.

The tradition is found across Afghanistan. Regional research shows it is practiced among Pashtun, Tajik, and Hazara communities, with documented cases in Kabul and higher reported rates in Nangarhar Province.

What Bacha posh means

For Afghan households, a bacha posh represents a practical solution to strict gender boundaries and the absence of a son. She secures family honour, provides financial help, and protects female relatives in public. Some families also attach a spiritual hope to the custom, believing that living with a daughter disguised as a boy will invite the birth of a future son.

Questions people ask about Bacha posh

See also

NowruzThe Iranian new year at the March equinox, kept with fire, greenery and picnicsBatokIndigenous Filipino tattooing, once worn as dress, rank and a rite of passagePeʻaThe traditional Samoan rite of full-body tattooing for men, tapped by master artistsHaus TambaranA sacred house of the Sepik peoples, used for ancestor worship and male initiation

Good reading and sources

• Girls will be boys in AfghanistanThe Guardian, Article
• The Afghan girls who live as boysBBC, Article
• The Afghan girls who live as boysBBC, Article
• Girls will be boys in AfghanistanThe Guardian, Article
• The Afghan girls who live as boysBBC, Article
• The Afghan girls who live as boysBBC, Article

• Bacha posh on WikipediaEncyclopedia
• Wikidata recordOpen data

It may contain mistakes. Traditions differ from one family, village and community to the next, and the people who keep them know them best. If something is wrong, tell us. Last refreshed 2026-10-06.