The conflicting views of these international agencies place those who advocate abandoning it as a cutting tool in a bind. They are caught between the commitments to universal human rights and cultural tolerance.
The common belief that cutting is a local practice based upon a deeply ingrained social norm exacerbates this dilemma. This view is a popular one, which suggests that where cutting occurs, families should follow the local bar in order to give their daughters a good chance of marriage. Selon this view, when most families cut, incentives are in favor of cutting. Incentives are in favor of not cutting when most families don’t. This could be because, for instance, a family who deviates from local norms is shunned and their daughters are unable to marry well-matched husbands.
This view, if correct, implies that cutting is not possible without introducing or imposing foreign values on a cutting society.
A successful program can alter the incentives on the marriage market if it convinces a large enough number of families to stop cutting. A successful programme can change the incentives in the marriage market by shifting a large number of families away from cutting. As soon as this occurs, families will be forced to coordinate, and the abandonment process will accelerate.
I and my colleagues examined these ideas in Sudan. This country is known for its high rate of cutting and the extreme forms that can cause infection, hemorrhaging and obstetric complications.
UNICEF Saleema Campaign in 2010 against female genital mutilation. Source: UNICEF-Sudan.
It is estimated that women and girls between 15-49 years old in Sudan have a rate of cutting above 80%. Infibulation is believed to be a common practice. It involves removing large quantities of tissue, and then sewing the edges of vulva and wounds closed to heal, leaving only a small hole.
Some may be surprised by what we found. It is not necessary to cut hair as a norm. Through the medium of entertainment, it is possible for attitudes towards this practice to be changed.
Local diversity
We have discovered that attitudes and practices are very different in small areas, contrary to the dominant view on cutting. We have worked with dozens of farming villages along the Blue Nile in the state of Gezira south of Khartoum.
We found that there is a mixture of families who cut and those who don’t, as well as a variety of people with positive and negative attitudes towards uncut girls. This has important implications both for our understanding of the reasons why parents choose to cut their daughters’ hair and for how we can encourage them to stop cutting.
Here in Burkina Faso, changing parents’ views on female genital mutilation-cutting (FGM-C) might require new techniques. Jessica Lea/DFID CC-BY-SA
We developed several methods to measure attitudes and practices associated with female genital slitting. The first method is based on the fact girls only have henna painted on their feet on the day of the cut. The henna on the toenails can be easily seen for several weeks, indicating that the girl was recently cut.
The data was compiled by combining the numbers with other sources to estimate the prevalence.
We developed our methods in order to minimize the risk of participants telling us only what we want to hear. Henna on the foot of a young girl, for instance, is a clear indication that she has been recently cut without having to ask her parents about their feelings.
We also used implicit association tests, which are psychological measures that rely heavily on reaction times. They were specifically designed to minimize the possibility of respondents misrepresenting their attitudes.
Our results indicate that there is a wide range of opinions on genital slitting in the region we studied. This is a direct contradiction to the assumption that international agencies use when they promote an end to cutting. Put, cutting isn’t widespread locally. Many neighbors are both those who cut and do not.
In most communities, we found that many people believe it’s important for both men and women to marry from families who have the same cutting practice. This commitment to coordinated cutting in the marriage market may promote local homogeneity.
This is only true if the families have similar values when it comes to cutting. This is true if families are identical because, for instance, they have a common opinion on whether Islam requires that cutting be done. All families may share the same views on the health risks associated with cutting.
Families may be different because one believes that Islam requires cutting while the other does not. Maybe one family is concerned about the health effects of cutting while another is not.
This means, from a policy perspective, that international agencies can’t initiate a change in behavior and then hope for social pressure to be applied by families within the population target group.
Change attitudes through movies.
We were surprised by the local diversity, but we can use it to create a new kind of intervention. We produced four feature-length fiction movies in which an extended family of Sudanese family members argue about whether or not to cut.
Some family members in our films support the continuation of cutting, while others are against it. The movies are able to portray the conflict between abandonment and cutting as locally as possible because the discussion about cutting takes place within a family.
In the four films, there are differences in the arguments that family members use to support and oppose cutting. One film was “control”. The “control” movie is a completely entertaining story that doesn’t address cutting at all. The three other movies have 27-minute-long subplots which dramatise a family’s internal conflict over cutting.