Excerpts of Tracy Marks’ review of The Underground Girls of Kabul, by Jenny Nordberg:  “…  about the "bacha posh" of Afghanistan – and the unofficially recognized but prevalent practice of dressing a girl as a boy and pretending that she is a boy until puberty. “In Afghanistan, males have considerable freedom, but females have little.  Reputation is a family's wealth, even more so than their income, and the number of sons strongly influences the status of the family. But what if there are no sons? A family can increase its status by pretending that one or more of its daughters are boys.

“A boy can work and earn income for the family; a girl cannot. A boy can go outdoors alone, participate in sports, and provide the necessary escort for his sisters in public places; a girl cannot. A boy can speak loudly and express personal opinions … can wear pants and need not cover himself from head to toe …  more freely pursue their education and choose when and who they marry; many girls are basically sold into marriage between the ages of 13-16. … In Afghanistan, it is also believed that making a child into a bacha posh will have a magical effect on the mother, who will then be able to bear a son. Despite their medical training, even doctors in Afghanistan believe that women have some control over whether they give birth to sons, and can, by ingesting certain foods or participating in certain rituals, influence the sex of their next child…”