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Jenny Nordberg on "The Underground Girls of Kabul"

Mohamed Somji
/
Flickr
A young girl in Herat, Afghanistan

In parts of Afghanistan, some families without sons pick a daughter to dress and live as a boy - a practice known as bacha posh.

In this River to River interview, investigative reporter Jenny Nordberg talks with Ben Kieffer about what is behind bacha posh, a practice she details in her book, The Underground Girls of Kabul: In Search of a Hidden Resistance in Afghanistan.

“Wherever there’s segregation, girls and women will use this; they will give up on their own gender and try to be something else in order to survive under that system,” Nordberg says. “You can certainly see it both as having an element of resistance to it and also confession to the ruling order."

Jenny Nordberg will be speaking at Iowa State University Thursday, February 5 at 8:00 pm in the Sun Room of the Memorial Union. This lecture is part of the World Affairs Series: Redefining Global Security.

Ben Kieffer is the host of IPR's River to River