Albanian sworn virgins (burrnesha) are women who take a vow of chastity and wear male clothing in order to be viewed as men in the patriarchal Northern Albanian society. The tradition exists to a smaller extent in Kosovo, Serbia, and Montenegro.[1][2]
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A woman is a sack made to endure.—Kanuni i Lekë Dukagjinit,[3] 15th century AD
The tradition of sworn virgins came from the Kanuni i Lekë Dukagjinit (English: The Code of Lekë Dukagjini, or simply the Kanun),[4] a set of codes and laws developed by Lekë Dukagjini and used mostly in northern Albania and Kosovo from the 15th century until the 20th century. The Kanun is not a religious document – many groups follow it including Roman Catholic, Albanian Orthodox, and Muslims.[5]
The Kanun dictates that families must be patrilineal (meaning wealth is inherited through a family's men) and patrilocal (upon marriage, a woman moves into the household of her husband's family).[6] Women are treated like property of the family. Under the Kanun women are given few rights. They cannot smoke, wear a watch, or vote in their local elections. They also cannot buy land, and there are many jobs they are not permitted to hold. There are even establishments that they cannot enter.[3][5]
There are many reasons why a woman would have wanted to take this vow. Some wanted to avoid an arranged marriage while others were forced by their fathers because there were no sons to look after their families.[7] Some took the oath after being in bad marriages, and thus did so in an effort to swear off men.[5] Taking the vow to become a man was a way to avoid an arranged marriage without dishonoring the groom’s family and creating a blood feud. Breaking the vow was once punishable by death, but it is doubtful that this punishment is still carried out now.[3] Many sworn virgins today still refuse to go back on their oath because their community would reject them for breaking the vows.[3]
While women can take the oath late in life, families in need of a male sibling to inherit the family's wealth have a girl take the vow at a very early age. The oath is usually taken in front of a town's elders, though some women take the oath privately signaling their choice by cutting their hair and wearing more masculine clothes.[3] Once the vow is taken, the woman becomes a man in society's eyes, and she will be referred to as such. She will no longer be inhibited by the societal norms that dictate a woman's actions. For example, she may work in positions only a man could hold.
In modern Albania the practice is dying out. The Socialist People's Republic of Albania did not encourage women to become sworn virgins. Women started gaining rights, coming closer to equaling men in social status. By the time the Soviet bloc fell from Albania, women had as many rights as men, especially in the central and southern regions. It is only in the northern region that many families still live within the traditional patriarchal way.[8] Currently there are fewer than forty sworn virgins left in Albania, and a few in neighboring countries. Most of these are over fifty years old.[5]