Gender Performativity in the Breadwinner

The Breadwinner (a novella written by Deborah Ellis and the film directed by Nora Twomey) depicts the struggles of an Afghan Bacha Posh; Parvana. . Bacha Posh in Dari means ‘to dress like a boy’. It is a century-old practice in Afghanistan. As women were forbidden to venture out of the confines of their house without a male companion; families without male members resort to dressing up their youngest daughter as a boy. These girls disguise themselves as boys when they go outside of the house to earn money or to go to school and when they get back home they change back to the girl they actually are. Parvana dresses up like a boy to venture out of her house to earn money as her father was imprisoned by Taliban soldiers for no good reason. She was Parvana at home but, when she steps out of the house, she performs as Aatish. This frequent transformation thwarts Parvana into a perpetual negotiation of her gender identity. The research objective of Anika Rahman Srishty, in this project, was to investigate the reasons behind Parvana’s gender fluidity as represented in both the film and text by means of using Judith Butler’s concept of Gender Performativity.

• Supervision