Balkan sworn virgins (in Albanian: burrnesha) are women who take a vow of chastity and wear male clothing in order to live as men in patriarchal northern Albanian society, Kosovo and Montenegro. National Geographic’s Taboo (2002) estimated that there were fewer than 102 Albanian sworn virgins left.
It was the only way a woman could inherit her family’s wealth, which was particularly important in a society in which blood feuds (gjakmarrja) resulted in the deaths of many male Albanians, leaving many families without male heirs. (However, anthropologist Mildred Dickemann suggests this motive may be “over-pat”, pointing out that a non-child-bearing woman would have no heirs to inherit after her, and also that in some families not one but several daughters became sworn virgins, and in others the later birth of a brother did not end the sworn virgin’s masculine role.)