Balkan sworn virgins

[1] In times when women had a prescribed role, burrnesha gave up their sexual, reproductive and social identities to acquire the same freedoms as men.

[3] As of 2022[update], while there were no exact figures, twelve burrnesha were estimated to remain in Northern Albania and Kosovo.

[7][9] The practice of sworn virginhood was first reported by missionaries, travelers, geographers and anthropologists, who visited the mountains of northern Albania in the 19th and early 20th centuries.

[11] One becomes a sworn virgin by swearing an irrevocable oath, in front of twelve village or tribal elders, to adopt the role and practice celibacy.

After this, sworn virgins live as men and others relate to them as such, usually though not always[12] using masculine pronouns to address them or speak about them to other people.

[15] The New York Times referred to the practice as "a centuries-old tradition in which women declared themselves men so they could enjoy male privilege".

[18] It is also likely that many people chose to become sworn virgins simply because it afforded them much more freedom than would otherwise have been available in a patrilineal culture in which women were secluded, sex-segregated, required to be virgins before marriage and faithful afterwards, betrothed as children and married by sale without their consent, continually bearing and raising children, constantly physically labouring, and always required to defer to men, particularly their husbands and fathers, and submit to being beaten.

[12] The practice has died out in Dalmatia and Bosnia, but is still carried out in northern Albania and to a lesser extent in North Macedonia.

Women started gaining legal rights and came closer to having equal social status, especially in the central and southern regions.

[2] It used to be believed that the sworn virgins had all but died out after 50 years of communism in Albania, but recent research suggests that may not be the case;[10] instead, the increase in feuding following the collapse of the communist regime could encourage a resurgence of the practice.