These international agencies have opposing views, which puts those who support abandoning as an effective tool for cutting costs in a difficult position. They are stuck between commitments to universal rights for all and tolerance of cultural differences.
When most families do not cut, the incentives are against it.
If this view is correct, it implies that cutting cannot be done without introducing foreign values or imposing them on a society that cuts.
If a successful program convinces enough families to stop cutting, it can change marriage market incentives. By shifting many families away from cutting, a successful program can change the marriage market incentives. Once this happens, families are forced to coordinate.
My colleagues and I examined these ideas in Sudan. This country is notorious for the high rates of cutting and its extreme forms, which can lead to infection, hemorrhaging, and obstetric complications.
UNICEF Saleema Campaign in 2010 against female genital mutilation. Source: UNICEF-Sudan.
According to estimates, women and girls aged between 15 and 49 years in Sudan are cutting at a rate above 80%. The procedure involves removing a large amount of tissue and sewing the edges and wounds to heal.
We found that it is not necessary to trim hair every day. It is possible to change attitudes about this practice through entertainment.
Local diversity
We found that attitudes and practices in small areas are different from the dominant view of cutting. Our work has been with dozens farming villages in the state Gezira, south of Khartoum, along the Blue Nile.
We discovered that a mix of families cut their daughters hair, and a mixed group of people have positive and negative attitudes toward uncut girls. These findings are important for understanding why parents cut the hair of their daughters and how to encourage them not to do so.
In Burkina Faso, it may be necessary to use new techniques in order to change parents’ attitudes towards female genital cutting (FGM-C).
We have developed several methods for measuring attitudes and practices related to female genital cutting. One method is based upon the fact that girls are only painted with henna the day after the cut. Henna can be seen on toenails up to several weeks later, which indicates the girl has been recently cut.
To estimate the prevalence, the data were compiled using other sources.
Toenails painted with henna. Sudan UNICEF Sudan/C.Efferson
Our methods were developed to reduce the possibility that participants would only tell us what they wanted to hear. Henna, for example, on the feet of a girl is a clear sign she was recently cut. This can be determined without asking her parents.
We also used implicit association tests, which are psychological measurements that heavily rely on reaction times. These tests were designed specifically to reduce the likelihood of respondents misrepresenting themselves.
Our findings indicate that there are a variety of opinions about genital cutting in the area we studied. It is important to note that cutting is not widespread in this region. To put it simply, the practice is not common. There are many neighbors who both cut and don’t.
We found that in most communities, people believed it was important for men and women to marry families with the same cutting practices. The commitment to coordinated cutting may promote local homogeneity.
Only if there are families with similar values.
Two families may have different beliefs about cutting. One family believes Islam requires it, while the other doesn’t. Perhaps one family is worried about the health consequences of cutting, and another isn’t.
From a policy perspective, this means that international agencies cannot initiate a behavior change and then hope to apply social pressure by families in the population target group.
Change your attitude through movies.
We were surprised at the diversity of local people, but it can be used to create new kinds of interventions. In four feature-length fictional movies, we produced an extended family of Sudanese relatives arguing about whether to cut or not.
In our films, some family members support cutting while others oppose it. By focusing on a single family, the movie can portray the conflict of abandonment versus cutting in a localized way.
Family members use different arguments to support or oppose cutting in each of the four movies. “Control” is an entertaining movie that does not address cutting. “Control” is a story that’s completely unrelated to cutting. Each of the three other films has a 27-minute subplot that dramatizes a family’s conflict about cutting.