Hapshetsut would be proud...maybe.

An Egyptian woman, Sisa Abu Daooh, recieved the highest award for motherhood for spending 30 years dressed as a man in order to provide for her family. Why did she do this? Her husband passed in the 1970s, leaving her a young widow with an unborn child to feed. With very few employment opportunities for women at the time (and no one willing to marry a pregnant widow), Sisa and her daughter faced starvation, so she did what she had to earn more.

Sadly, many parts of the world still fail in regard to women's rights so much that Sisa's story is actually common, even normal for some places. So far (as I'm aware), the crossdressing scenario has been depicted as both fiction and documented reality for US media.

One fictional scenario can be found in the 2003 film Osama. In the story, a young Afghan girl in the midst of taliban-controlled Kabul is forced to disguise herself as a boy (and redubbed "Osama") in order to work and provide food for herself, her widowed mother and grandmother. I won't spoil whether she succeeded or not.

Later I found a real life example in Albania, home to the (now dying out) tradition of the Burnessha, or "Sworn virgins". These women changed their legal status to "male" to serve as provider if they lacked a biological male in the family to do so. Because this choice is irreversable, the sworn virgins spend the rest of their lives living and socializing as men. Of course, social reform in the country in the past 50 years has allowed more opportunities for women, now rendering this practice obsolete.

While women in the US do not have to go as far as cross dressing to provide sustenance, but often in corporate or high stress settings, many women find themselves forced to become men on a more psychological level in order to succeed, such as suppressing their emotions, behaving more competitively and hiding all signs that can be interpreted as weakness.

Women in the US or other developed nations will never know what Sisa and the Burbeshha went through. I won't compare uncomparable circumastances but I do want to make one thing clear: Women should NOT have to become men to be recognized as human.