I just have to blog about this news story because I find it fascinating. The New York Times has a piece about the sworn virgins of Albania. These are women who took an oath of virginity and took on the role of male head of the family when all their men died.
For centuries, in the closed-off and conservative society of rural northern Albania, swapping genders was considered a practical solution for a family with a shortage of men. Her father was killed in a blood feud, and there was no male heir. By custom, Ms. Keqi, now 78, took a vow of lifetime virginity. She lived as a man, the new patriarch, with all the swagger and trappings of male authority — including the obligation to avenge her father’s death.
These women have short hair, wear men’s clothes, associate mostly with men and exhibit typical male behaviour. They sit with their legs open, they speak with a deep voice, they walk like a man.
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They’re also just as chauvinist as any man would be in their culture, which values men far more than women. They dismiss housework as being only “women’s work” and expect the other women in their family to be subservient. And they enjoy their role.
When she stepped outside the village, she enjoyed being taken for a man. “I was totally free as a man because no one knew I was a woman,” Ms. Keqi said. “I could go wherever I wanted to and no one would dare swear at me because I could beat them up. I was only with men. I don’t know how to do women’s talk. I am never scared.”
It doesn’t seem to have occurred to the virgins that they could have used their newfound power and work to improve the lot of other women, given that they had once experienced the hardship of living as a second-class citizen because of their sex. Instead, they happily stepped into the role of dominant leader and gleefully accepted the privilege that went with it.
This story is fascinating because of what it reveals about the construction of gender in terms of power (and powerlessness). The old Albanian culture is a sexist one that circumscribes the freedom of women and puts power in the hands of men. But the ability of some women to take on a dominant role shows that their society relies on its members knowing their place within a heirarchy based on sex, but that sex does not automatically equal inferiority.
The way these women took on male behaviour is also interesting. It shows that masculinity is a construct that isn’t necessarily based on physical form. If you dress, walk and act like a man for long enough, people won’t be able to spot the difference.
Gender roles demand that we play a set part. For most of us, acting like a man or a woman is so ingrained that we never think about what we’re doing. This story shows that what’s between our legs doesn’t have to dictate who we are.