Eradicating Female Genital Mutilation: Identifying Practical Socio-Economic Measures And Technologies

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Today is International Day of Zero Tolerance for Female Genital Mutilation (FGM), which perhaps offers an opportunity to look at progress made and some of the challenges ahead in ending FGM.

I am an academic sociologist.  I subtitled my Eradicating Female Genital Mutilation book, published in 2015, ‘A UK Perspective‘ because I wanted to show respect to those, unlike me, working in and reporting directly from the field, often in countries in Africa or the Middle East.

What I researched and wrote about covered also however many parts of the globe beyond the U.K. – and the book was amongst the very first expressly to consider FGM from wider socio-economic and epidemiological perspectives.  My thoughts today, presented here in summary, are therefore on progress made since 2015, and on issues which we must still address.

Particularly, I have considered here, looking back on this topic, ways in which these issues connect with another major theme which preoccupies me – the adoption of practical wider socio-economic measures and low-level technologies which, as well as having intrinsic value, may help to move forward  the resolution of matters such as FGM.  I will examine this second theme more closely in a subsequent post.

My retrospective review, drawing on sections of my book, offers four themes, which I explore in this post:

1. Overall perspectives: multi-agency approaches? and leadership
2. People ‘not like us’: ‘purity’, hypocrisy and cultural relativism
3. From tradition to modernity: underclass, anomie or autonomy?
4. Economics for real people: education, work, land, human potential and well-being

In a post to follow I will look at how maybe standard and developing practical measures and low technologies can help us find ways forward

I have edited my original texts very lightly, and inserted links to explanatory references and / or more recent work (some of it published on my website) where this offers further consideration of various concepts discussed below.

1. Overall perspectives: multi-agency approaches? and leadership

I have always had reservations about the ‘multi-agency‘ approach to FGM, not because many agencies must indeed be involved, but because there is little genuine top-level accountability.  With whom does the buck actually stop?  Given that a baby, girl or woman somewhere in the world undergoes FGM every eleven seconds, this is an urgent question.

It is difficult to see how a multi-agency approach can operate effectively, in the absence of either a transparently open discussion and agreement, or fully articulated top-down political direction with clear accountability at that level.  Articulated consensus between all parties, about the fundamental issues, and conscious agreement about who will do what with what resources, are surely essential if genuine progress is to be made. …  To date there is no fully articulated paradigm, or even transparent shared framework, for the eradication of FGM.. (p.18)

Interdisciplinarity in the full, academic research sense might well produce a freer flow of ideas and constructs in all directions, but few who have charge of an externally funded agency would currently find that level of open exchange attractive. … So if there is to be a model or paradigm … whilst some disagree, the obvious model is public health…. The focus of public health is (at least ideally) wellness – the potential to be fit and live positively – not disease or disability….

It is far better, for instance, not to experience cholera, HIV, car accidents or mercury poisoning – all complaints which arise from specific contexts or (whether knowingly or not) from particular behaviours – than to be in need of medical attention for these conditions. In other words, public health focuses on removing the socio-economic causes of ill-health, rather than on treating conditions once they have occurred. …

So, to translate the public health approach to FGM … there would be people to find out why the phenomenon still occurs … people to organise public information and educational programmes about the harm it does and why it must be stopped (with tailored approaches to accommodate the specifics of beliefs in various locations), people to ensure more direct connection with those at high risk of undergoing (or administering) FGM, and people to provide specialist medical and psychiatric / social care for those who have already experienced it.

And there would also be people responsible for protecting potential victims, and for delivering justice when nonetheless the crime of FGM had been committed – as well as others whose responsibility if to ensure that the legislation is fit for purpose with adequate resources of all kinds to ensure it is upheld….

But there remains currently a sense in which women with direct experience, along with those professionals from mainstream society who attend them … are still expected to spearhead prevention as well as ‘cure’.

The unique input of survivors would still be invaluable, but of a different (and less onerous) sort, if there were a developed and structured policy position or paradigm, where everyone concerned, from within communities, from a range of professional disciplines, and from the front line of senior policy-making, had co-ordinated input to support the implementation of a programme to stop FGM.

Resolving the question of who leads and who otherwise has input will not however be easy. …  For professionals involved there is evidence of what might be termed turf wars.  Despite formal dialogue each discipline still operates according to its own understandings and procedures. …

An effective and mature paradigm for preventing FGM, at least in a wealthy nation such as the UK, would be led by those best placed to take a wider view.  Some of the personnel in senior leadership roles might well be medical; some would have different backgrounds and expertise.  Others with a community base would have significant input. The locus of responsibility for the programme as a whole would be clearly identified and understood, with overt and publicly accountable leadership. (pp. 291-5)

2. People ‘not like us’: ‘purity’, hypocrisy and cultural relativism

The lack of engagement with FGM, despite significant incidence, in countries such as the UK (and mainland Europe, the USA, Australia and other Western nations,) is at least partly because it impinges very little directly on the experience of those who make decisions.

I see little evidence that the reality of the challenge is to date fully recognised and understood.  The UK Government, and many of those who provide services to address FGM, continue to see it as ‘the other’, as something shocking which happens, regretfully, to people not quite like ‘us’.

The serious intent to stop FGM is genuine; but there is scant acknowledgement that Britain too is a place where, historically and to the present, women and people from various minorities are vulnerable and some citizens are far less equal than others – a place for instance where, despite claimed good intentions, some women and children remain at significant socially determined risk.

Perhaps one aspect of FGM which is less considered in Western discussion of FGM is the frequent emphasis on ‘purity’ – though the hypocrisy sometimes underlying this apparent unconcern is sometimes evident.

The basic rationale for FGM in many practising communities is that it makes the girl child ‘pure’, so she can emerge into adulthood ready for the transaction which will result in her early marriage … cleansed of the genital organs which are regarded as unclean, perhaps taboo.

To most Westerners this emphasis on purity is strange; but it is not as alien to Western thinking as may be imagined…. there remain many taboos around women and sexuality even in the most modern societies – the position of the American extreme right on, for instance, abortion or even family planning makes this point well. …

Further, whilst FGM is extremely rare amongst modern white women, there are other practices such as labiaplasty and breast enlargement which could be seen as similar (debate continues), and there are confirmed reports of FGM occurring in the USA and in Britain up to and including the 1950s. The reasons for these procedures may have been presented differently, but the concern around women’s imperfect bodies and aspects of female sexuality are common threads. …

FGM is in many ways the ultimate in sickening patriarchal oppression, it is indeed patriarchy incarnate, but it is and has not been the only form of cruelty in modern societies. Nor is it the only practice underpinned by a deep and often unspoken, incoherent fear of female sexuality. (pp.12-13)

And inevitably when we consider deeply felt convictions around ‘purity’, sexuality and the like, we also encounter cultural and ethical relativity – ideas which, in the context of FGM, unequivocally demand consideration.

(Hugely simplifying complex positions), cultural relativists historically have claimed that there are no fundamental rights or wrongs – every society has its own beliefs and ways of life, and in each of them those ways are the ‘best’ for that community.

The concept of cultural relativity can (however) be used to examine a situation or event, whilst also saying the phenomenon itself is wrong. … This is the position now frequently adopted by many activists, as well as bodies such as the World Health Organisation, as they face up to FGM and other harmful traditional practices (HTPs).

But not everyone takes this approach.  There are still those – some of whom might be called ‘Anthr/Apologists‘ – who assert it is no business of white people in the West to ‘interfere’ with the practices of people of colour in other places. …

This view can .. be rejected out of hand, by no means least because it denies fundamental human rights and accepts that needless suffering of children. … There is no loss of analytical rigour in acknowledging human rights must trump anthropological ‘even-handedness’. (pp.16-17)

Self-evidently, work to eradicate FGM and similar harms demand careful consideration of the values each of us brings to our efforts.  It is important to acknowledge that no society or community has an indisputable claim to being right about everything; hypocrisies abound across the globe.  But that does not mean there are no moral absolutes.  For most of us engaged in the eradication of FGM one of those absolutes in the entitlement of every person to human rights, protecting them from harm.

3. From tradition to modernity: underclass, anomie or autonomy?

The past half-century or so has seen massive migrations of people across the globe, including large numbers of those from African, South Asian and South American countries to the ‘global North’. Some of this migration is voluntary, but perhaps increasingly it is also driven by basic insecurities and fear in the countries of origin. Unsurprisingly, when people finally arrive in ‘Western’ countries they often seek support in communities of their original fellow country(wo)men, continuing to share the language and understandings of their location or region of origin.  Serious consequences arising from this understandable choice may occur when the upshot is a disconnect with the new wider society.

In the location of origin, for example, a girl who refuses or evades FGM may experience anomie – a loss of status and connection which distances her from what would otherwise be her community support.  On the contrary, however, a girl who accepts or is subjected to FGM in her new, Western location may experience alienation from her wider society, in effect being pushed into an underclass of dislocated people who have few connections with their new host nation.

‘Underclass’ is a term sometimes misunderstood.  It has on occasion been appropriated by commentators (usually to the political right) who use it loosely to suggest that those to whom it might apply are morally lacking – ‘no moral compass’ – or otherwise in some way to ‘blame’ for their misfortune. ..

[But] in the sense of the word ‘underclass’ used [here, in this work..] ultimate responsibility for the situation in which … girls with FGM find themselves lies with society as a whole. We, the members of the wider mainstream society, have not prevented the abuse which FGM constitutes, nor have we adequately resolved or repaired the damage which FGM inflicts on vulnerable children. … there is no way the genital mutilation of a child can be her own responsibility. …

FGM correlates closely with patriarchal oppression.  One of the main rationales for FGM in traditional societies is that it prepares girls for marriage in communities where women who do not marry risk social ostracism and sometimes become literal outcasts.

In the worst case [in traditional societies or communities, girls’] physical survival may hinge upon their FGM status: no FGM, no adult status, access to support, not even perhaps to a roof over their heads, not permitted to handle food or other fundamental essentials … perhaps even barred from family occasions … a situation which may be made even worse if, potentially, it is linked to non-ownership of land because a woman is denied adult status.

The cruel irony is that, whilst in modern societies FGM is in theory totally irrelevant to the normal status of women, the very act of inflicting it in a more modern open context may result in the anomic status – ‘anomie’ – which in traditional societies FGM is intended to avoid. (pp. 48-9)

Even in traditional societies however FGM status can be a complex matter.  On the one hand the girl-child undergoing FGM suddenly achieves an adult status perhaps unmatched by her experience and maturity – how many eg twelve-year-olds are equipped to cope with the adult world? – but on the other hand in, for instance, parts of Western Africa such as Sierra Leone, Liberia and Guinea there are centuries-old organisations owned and run by ‘initiated’ (cut) women which, in collaboration with similar men’s organisations,  in effect operate the rule of law.

The Sande Society … dedicated to the spirit Sande … is a vehicle for tight control by a coterie of senior women, often from large and wealthy families – the grande dames of these African societies. …

Girl initiates to Sande [or Bondo or other societies] undergo training in ‘how to be a woman’ and are then subjected to FGM before they are declared to have achieved adulthood. Once initiated their secret society provides these women with life-long benefits such as the right to meet amongst themselves without permission from anyone – a privilege not given in other spheres of adult life, where permission from husbands must be sought for many activities and tasks. …

The initiation programme itself, including FGM, is often a very expensive process in which families invest hard-earned savings in order to gain prestige and future financial security for both themselves and their daughters…. subsistence farming families may pay the cost of an entire harvest to initiate their daughters … [which] indicates to the wider community that the farmers are economically viable and .. ensures that the daughter is not stigmatised, nor her adult existence jeopardised because she has not been accepted by the Sande. …

In some respects it may be doubly dangerous for young women isolated in traditional communities in the modern world to rebel … It is one thing to demur when the only alternative prospect was exclusion from any means of survival.  It is another thing, far more destabilising of communities attempting to maintain the traditions and hierarchies of centuries, when young women rebel because they have a realistic prospect of autonomous adulthood …

Instead of being outcast without FGM [or, eg forced / child marriage], as would be expected in the time-established way, a girl who wants to escape mutilation and the pre-ordained traditional frameworks may find that she is not … anomic, lost without any support or alternatives. …

Small wonder then that recalcitrant daughters in traditional communities set within a modern context may even find themselves in great personal danger.  Their own community may perceive them as jeopardising everything which has meaning to that group, a threat which may well be met with whatever sanction or force is required to prevent it. … One has only to observe the grim determination of those traditionalists who oppose girls’ education in some parts of Nigeria, Pakistan and so on to see that women who resist the old ways, whatever the form of their resistance, are sometimes in deadly peril. (pp. 50-54)

As we see, the costs of these contradictions or tensions are not ‘only’ economic.  The impacts can be hugely personal and damaging, especially in a ‘modern’ context.

For young women who refuse FGM fate may or may not be kind.  With enough encouragement and help they may become autonomous members of mainstream society, educated, employed and self-sufficient.  But at the other extreme they could instead become another victim of kidnap, forced marriage, brutally delivered mutilation, ‘honour’ killing of trafficking.

Personal outcomes are uncertain if dissenters seek a life in modern Western society, whilst still their traditional community steadfastly values unquestioned group cohesion more than notions of individual well-being, let alone any individual’s human rights. …

For women with so little autonomy the demands may be almost irreconcilable. … for some of the girls the teenage years may be blighted by withdrawal and perhaps psychological illness: the incidence of psychiatric conditions is significantly above the general norm for some young (and older) women facing ethnic cultural discrepancies.

It is also possible that some young men in their teens and twenties attempt to resolve these contradictions by adopting overtly active roles in extreme religious or political-military organisations, or in other groups or gangs: there are young men, for instance, who may even go abroad to join the jihad or, more probably (as with some girls), become involved in damaging gang behaviour nearer home. …

Whilst the perils of FGM anywhere are massive, the socio-economic (as opposed to health) complexities for young women from traditional practising communities of the issues in modern societies are of an even greater dimension. …

Anomie or autonomy?  It could be a close call.  (pp.55-56)

And so we return briefly to the concept of ‘underclass’, those excluded from mainstream society, having little money, few other resources and the least power.  Like the rest of us, these people need at a minimum food and shelter, and must find ways to obtain sustenance and other human comforts.  People in the underclass, wherever they are, may be subject to very active levels of policing and criminal justice.

One telling way to represent the active constraints placed upon those with least influence is to consider pathologies of power, a notion examined particularly by Paul Farmer, a professor of medical anthropology, in the context of structural violence – which he defines as any offence against human dignity.

In Farmer’s analysis the focus is often on infectious diseases, which can be seen as intimately related to the incidence also of justice, poverty and malnutrition.  Pathologies of power, Farmer tells us, are connected very directly with the social conditions (set by the powerful) determining who will suffer and who will not.  And just as infectious diseases fit [a] model of eradication, so too does FGM.  Both could be mitigated, if not stopped, by appropriate socio-economic measures, and both arise because of human interaction. …

In modern Western societies it is the act of FGM itself which creates the scenario which the actively commissioned harm is intended [by awarding adult status and / or ‘purity’] to mitigate. …

It is likely that some girls [eg in the UK] who undergo FGM disengage from school in much the same way as girls who experience it in traditional contexts. … the act of FGM may be followed by de facto, if not overt, forced marriage … The girl child may become … the possession of her intended husband, investment in her education now at an end …

And thus do the agents of the traditional way of things seek to perpetuate the control of women, in modern societies as well as in the ‘developing’ world. Patriarchy is at its most powerful when it is ‘invisible’, when the social order cannot be conceived by those who experience it in any other way. … When FGM occurs, that objective [may be] accomplished by the creation of an anomic, gendered underclass of people who have no power or influence of their own. (pp. 57-58)

4. Economics for real people: education, work, land, human potential and well-being

It is self-evident that the health and well-being of many women and girls living in the shadow of FGM would be improved if they were economically autonomous and self-sufficient.  It must be said however that such status is not likely to be the ambition of every woman or girl, in whatever part of the world, who rejects the traditions of FGM, child / forced marriage and so on.  There is a tradition in FGM practising communities which says women must face ‘three sorrows‘ in their lives: when they are first mutilated, on their wedding night (and beyond, as they endure attempts at penetration), and when they give birth, with a raised risk of infant morbidity or mortality, or, for themselves, obstetric fistula.  FGM can be fatal.  These outcomes alone are certainly good reason if possible to avoid FGM.

Nonetheless, entitlement to education and financial security are critical if FGM is to become history.  Avoiding potentially lethal harm must be the first step, but enabling adult autonomy and well-being is the next.

It is widely acknowledged that FGM correlates for those who experiences it with reduced educational prospects. It becomes a mechanism whereby many girls who undergo mutilation become the members of the adult workforce least equipped to engage in modern economies … neither their health nor their education may be good enough …

Access to financial, basic day-today sustenance, social capital and well-being is not however alone in being influenced by FGM.

A connected resource is land.  One way in which women in traditional communities may have a degree of independence is through land and farming.

Reports however suggest that Maasai women who refuse to undergo FGM may have been threatened with the removal of their right to land.

Similarly, there has traditionally been agreement between the Poro (male) and Sande (female) societies that women of high status may hold land for the purposes of bush school (preparation for womanhood and then the ceremony of FGM).  In Sierra Leone in 2012 ownership of that land therefore reverted to the Poro as the Sande leaders agreed (during the Ebola epidemic) not to conduct more bush  and FGM for a duration. (pp.65-66)

That is not however the only matter to hand.

Resource problems are further complicated in some societies by polygamy; multiple wives will not have the same access to means of support which coupledom might provide – perhaps leaving even less for any woman unable to procure a husband at all  …

Over time land and other resource issues may, in the more modern context of civil litigation, be contested … But whatever the outcome, such re-appropriations lay bare the as yet largely unexplored wider economic perils to which girls and women in traditional communities, not least those who resist FGM, may be exposed. (pp.66-67)

Another issue is the ‘shanty town’ effect.

There is a danger that both FGM itself, and its avoidance, will precipitate socio-economic situations from which it will be difficult, if not impossible, to escape.  …

Those who are for whatever reason dispossessed … frequently find it difficult to disentangle themselves from the disadvantages they face … This disadvantage is obviously amplified by FGM, and even moreso if the original harm has been multiplied by problems later on with childbirth, obstetric fistula – surely the ultimate in debilitating damage – and infection [whether] chronic or acute and potentially lethal.

Likewise, there is some evidence to suggest that those who are excluded, particularly if in ‘slums’, fare even worse than people who live in the country.  Income may drop over the years, and levels of health drop even more, as poverty becomes more grinding. … Prospects for all members of the remaining family may not be good.

[And] similar considerations may also apply to young women in Western countries who are disenfranchised, whether through subjection to FGM or because they lose their community anchor by refusing it.

Some shanty towns in the ‘developing’ world are vast expanses of unregulated public health peril; some outcomes of FGM in the Western world may have comparable effects.  Ill-health, physical and mental, is not only a personal disaster, but also a major economic hazard. (pp.67-68)

As we have seen, gendered health issues are serious and pressing, for women and for their communities.  But they are also critical at a wider economic scale.  There is a growing acknowledgement that women are an essential element – potentially half, globally – of their community and nations.

Given the urgent need in many parts of the ‘developing’ world to engage the skills and energy of all parties, it is time to recognise the enormous constraints which FGM places on national and local ambitions. … Economic factors play a significant role in the persistence of FGM in regard to who does it, why it is done and the impacts it has.

Of course not everyone in FGM-practising communities seeks, or is even aware of, the potential benefits which a healthy and well-educated workforce can bring; but those at the higher levels of authority surely know, and have a duty to deliver. …

[In 2012] the UK Prime Minister, David Cameron, … pointed out that providing girls in Africa with just one extra year of education can increase their wages by as much as 20 per cent; and. critically, studies show Africa’s economies would have doubled in size over the past 30 years were they not hampered by the limited educational and employment opportunities for women.

Such a view [was in 2014] reiterated with a specific focus on FGM and child marriage by The Economist.  Unless the pace of abolition picks up, the number of victims will grown from 3.6 million a year now to 4.1 million in 2035 … and, as Navi Pillay [from 2008 to 2014 United Nations High Commissioner for Human Rights, says], based on the current 1 per cent decrease per annum, the target of reducing FGM prevalence by half will not be achieved until 2074.

Babatunde Osotimehin (1949-2017), Head of the United Nations Population Fund, [added, at mid-2010/20 values, that] if girls finished school and got employment at the same rate as boys, they would add $27 billion annually to the economy of Kenya, and $17 billion to the economy of Nigeria.  Describing girls as ‘the world’s least exploited resource’, Dr Osotimehin and the First Ladies of Africa have asked that the age for marriage be raised to 18; education will, he emphasised, empower women to adopt positive health behaviour. (p.71)

But there is one further very important issue, sometimes related to FGM, which we must consider:  Stunted children.

Stunting, the World Health Organisation tells us, is “the impaired growth and development that children experience from poor nutrition, repeated infection, and inadequate psychosocial stimulation. Children are defined as stunted if their height-for-age is more than two standard deviations below the WHO Child Growth Standards median …  in early life — particularly in the first 1000 days from conception until the age of two – impaired growth has adverse functional consequences on the child. Some of those consequences include poor cognition and educational performance, low adult wages, lost productivity and, when accompanied by excessive weight gain later in childhood, an increased risk of nutrition-related chronic diseases in adult life.”

At a roundtable of African heads of state [etc] the World Bank Group President Jim Yong Kim stated that up to 16 per cent of GNP in Africa is lost each year because malnourished children grow up to be less productive youths and adults.

Not all stunted children will have mothers who experienced FGM … but the numbers are probably significant; we already know these children are at particular risk of failing to thrive.

One writer at least, Adam Burtle, has ascribed this failure of babies, and in particular black babies, to thrive as ‘structural violence’, a term arising [as we saw] from the work of Paul Farmer. .. “Structural violence is visited upon all those whose social status denies them access to the fruits of scientific and social progress.” (pp.71-72)

And so we come full-circle to the theme of my introduction to this talk: the emphasis on approaches to FGM eradication which build on social equity, on the philosophy of public health rather than legalistic or clinical perspectives alone.

[Structural violence] brings together the sociological and economic constraints which comprise the circumstances of women and girls (and their babies) across the generations experiencing FGM.

Legal sanctions, educational programmes and medical support are all part of the necessary package to address this fundamental attack on human rights.  But ultimately FGM must be tackled at a deeper level even than the provision of particular services.

Opportunity costs [must be vital parts of the equation]. … It is enough that FGM must be eradicated because it is cruel and a grim abnegation of human rights; but a corollary of the eradication would be healthier economies as well as healthier girls, women and babies.

It is time these additional benefits – themselves also enhancers of human well-being – were quantified , both internationally and in communities in the UK and other Western nations.  Money speaks, and in the case of bringing economic costs into the spotlight, that money can also shore up, for any who continue to doubt, the criticality of eradicating FGM as soon as we possibly can. (pp.72-73)

It is clear that the various costs of FGM are not ‘just’ to the health and well-being of the women and girls who undergo it.

FGM is an economic tragedy as well as a human one; it impacts on every aspect of the communities in which it occurs. It is a waste of human and financial resources which are being squandered, but are sorely needed to bolster local and even national economies, to the better benefit of all.

The sooner that bald fact is recognised at every level of communities and societies, the sooner the determined will may be found amongst those who care to stop this cruel practice.

…..

In summary, I have tried in this discussion to identify some dislocations and unresolved issues around how (particularly, Western?) observers may understand or not some obstacles to eradicating FGM.

We have here considered:
> overall perspectives on eradicating FGM: multi-agency approaches? and leadership;
> the idea of people ‘not like us’: ‘purity’, hypocrisy and cultural relativism;
> transitions from tradition to modernity: underclass, anomie or autonomy?;
> economics for real people: education, work, land, human potential and well-being.

In a second post on this topic we shall look at some established and possible practical and low technology measures which may offer ways forward in the eradication of FGM.

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This post is the first of four posts here which I have written in February and March 2024, looking at the way my perceptions around eradicating FGM have changed (hopefully, developed?) over the past decade:

Eradicating Female Genital Mutilation: Identifying Tensions And Challenges (February 6 – Zero Toleration to FGM Day)

Eradicating Female Genital Mutilation: Looking At Practical And Low-Tech Ways Forward (March 8 – International Women’s Day)

Men As Policy-Makers Must Support #EndFGM – Enable Women To Gain Respect As Adults Via Fair Social And Economic Contexts (14 March – Commission on the Status of Women, CSW68)

World Water Day – And Why It Matters For #EndFGM (March 22 – World Water Day)

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Read more about FGM and Economics

Your Comments on this topic are welcome.  
Please post them in the Reply box which follows these announcements…..

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Books by Hilary Burrage on female genital mutilation

https://orcid.org/0000-0002-6684-2740

Eradicating Female Genital Mutilation: A UK Perspective
Ashgate / Routledge (2015)  Reviews

Hilary has published widely and has contributed two chapters to Routledge International Handbooks:

Female Genital Mutilation and Genital Surgeries: Chapter 33,
in Routledge International Handbook of Women’s Sexual and Reproductive Health (2019),
eds Jane M. Ussher, Joan C. Chrisler, Janette Perz
and
FGM Studies: Economics, Public Health, and Societal Well-Being: Chapter 12,
in The Routledge International Handbook on Harmful Cultural Practices (2023),
eds Maria Jaschok, U. H. Ruhina Jesmin, Tobe Levin von Gleichen, Comfort Momoh

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PLEASE NOTE:

The Inter-African Committee on Traditional Practices Affecting the Health of Women and Children, which has a primary focus on FGM, is clear that in formal discourse any term other than ‘mutilation’ concedes damagingly to the cultural relativists. ‘FGM’ is therefore the term I use here  – though the terms employed may of necessity vary in informal discussion with those who by tradition use alternative vocabulary. See the Feminist Statement on the Naming and Abolition of Female Genital Mutilation,  The Bamako Declaration: Female Genital Mutilation Terminology and the debate about Anthr/Apologists on this website.

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This article concerns approaches to the eradication specifically of FGM.  I am also categorically opposed to MGM, but that is not the focus of this particular piece, except if in any specifics as discussed above.

Anyone wishing to offer additional comment on more general considerations around male infant and juvenile genital mutilation is asked please to do so via these relevant dedicated threads.

Discussion of the general issues re M/FGM will not be published unless they are posted on these dedicated pages. Thanks