Sworn Virgin Women in Albania take an oath to abstain from marriage and motherhood. These women are known as Sworn Virgins in the Balkins. Sounds crazy right! It is hard to fully understand why, but once you dig deeper to get a better understanding, it all starts to make sense for what these women have to deal with since they are female. In my research, I wanted to know exactly what a sworn virgin in the Balkins was, why they take these vows, and does this still happen in todays time. According to Sonja K. Foss, Mary E. Domenico and Karen A. Foss , from Gender
Stories: Negotiating Identity in a Binary World, a sworn virgin in the Balkins, is an
Albanian women who becomes identified as a man. This has be recognized as a third gender since early 1800s. These women transform themselves to look like men and they even take on the roles of a man. They are not surgically transformed, but they cut their hair and change all their appearances to look like a man. These women take a vow in front of their families and villages to refrain from motherhood and marriage. Once the vow has been taken, these women are now able to live as men. These vows are allowed to be taken at any age of a women's life (Foss, Dominico, Foss pg 43).…show more content… Some women choose to live this way because they want to be treated equal to the men. Women in Albania did not have much freedom, they were secluded and sex-segregated, and were required to be virgins until marriage. A main reason for the transformation was because in
