IN the remote mountain villages of Albania, the women no longer want to be men. The ancient tradition of “sworn virgins” - women who take on the role of paterfamilias, forsaking love, marriage and children - is threatened by the corrosive influence of modern life.

Diana Rakipi, 53, a sworn virgin since the age of eight, is angered by the way capitalism and democracy have combined to destroy her way of life. Rakipi, who comes from the mountain village of Tropoja, near Albania’s border with Kosovo, said her parents had encouraged her to become a boy after the deaths of her three brothers.

As the oldest girl in a family of 12 children, she took on her role with relish.

“Women were badly regarded at that time,” she said. “We [sworn virgins] are totally free and can rule in the family.”

Rakipi joined the army for six years, where she trained women to fight but returned to the men’s barracks at night. Now tough-talking, with cocky, exaggerated male mannerisms, she works as a security guard.

She spoke with pride of her fighting skills and her role in charge of her wider family. But she lamented the changes that the death of Enver Hoxha, Albania’s fearsome Stalinist dictator, had brought in 1985.

“Nowadays women are in such a strong position, it’s better not to be a man,” she said. “Dictatorship was better. During the time of Hoxha, everyone was the same and had the same amount of bread. Now some have so much and some have nothing.”

The custom of the sworn virgin derives from the ancient traditional law of the Kanun of Lek Dukagjin, which said women belonged to their fathers until marriage, when they became the property of their husbands.

The tradition has allowed women wishing to avoid arranged marriages to renounce their femininity in exchange for equal status with men and the chance to control their own fate.

Taking an oath as a sworn virgin opens the door to the superior male world. Sworn virgins are responsible for the family wealth and property. They are allowed to carry weapons and their authority is unquestioned.

The gender change does not involve surgery, nor is it to be confused with homosexuality, which was punishable by impris-onment in Albania until 1995.

But the women cut their hair short and wear baggy men’s clothes. They walk like men and talk in a deeper voice.

Pashe Keqi, 77, from the mountain town of Kruje, took her leap into manhood when she was 11, after four brothers tried to flee abroad to escape a blood feud. As head of the family, she is now trying to end the feud.

Unlike Rakipi, Keqi was persecuted by the communist regime because of her brothers and languished for years in a labour camp. Yet even she regrets the passing of communism and the declining status of sworn virgins in capitalist society.

It is believed only 30 to 40 sworn virgins remain. As life becomes easier in Albania the flow of young people from the mountains to the cities is increasing, and modern life is slowly finding its way back there. For the younger generation the choice between being a woman and having the rights of a man is no longer so clear-cut.

The price has been high for the sworn virgins, who have been required to remain celibate and unmarried. But there is no turning back, even for younger virgins such as Rakipi.

“I have never regretted not being married or having children,” she said. “I work for my home and for my country, nothing else.”

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