RESOURCE FILES

Chapter 4

Building Order: Culture and History

Female Genital Mutilation

Conflict between cultures is most likely when one culture's long-held tradition is perceived as brutal and oppressive by members of other cultures. Female genital mutilation (FGM) is one such tradition. People from cultures that don't practice FGM condemn it vehemently. But in the cultures that practice FGM, it has considerable social value.

According to the World Health Organization, between 85 and 114 million girls and women worldwide have been subjected to FGM.¹ This practice occurs in some form in hundreds of ethnic groups in over 40 countries in Africa and the Middle East, including Saudi Arabia, Iraq, Syria, Kenya, and Nigeria.

The procedure, which entails removal of the clitoris or destruction of the labia and vulva, or both, is typically performed by a midwife using a sharp instrument such as a razor blade, scissors, knife, or piece of glass. Antiseptic techniques and anesthesia are generally not used, except among the affluent. The girl's age at the time of the ritual varies from culture to culture, but she is usually between 4 and 10.

This cultural tradition reflects the value of women in these societies. Where FGM exists as a common practice, men have traditionally demanded that their wives be virgins when they marry. Indeed, a girl who has not undergone this procedure may be considered "unclean" or a prostitute by local villagers and therefore unmarriageable. The ritual also serves to regulate women's sexuality by diminishing sexual pleasure.

Ironically, women themselves usually mothers and grandmothers defend and enforce the practice, exerting strong pressure on their daughters and granddaughters to abide by the custom.² Such pressure is seldom motivated by cruelty. In fact, these older women may have the girls' best interests in mind. If a young woman's marriageability, and therefore her future economic security, requires that she undergo FGM, her very survival is at stake:

In a culture in which men will not marry you unless you have been mutilated and there is no other work you can do and you are . . . considered a prostitute if you are not mutilated, you face a very big problem. Women mutilate their daughters because they really are looking down the road to a time when the daughter will . . . marry and at least have a roof . . . and food.³

Perhaps not surprisingly, given these considerations, FGM is spreading worldwide rather than diminishing despite modernization, public education, and legal prohibition (FGM was recently outlawed in Egypt).⁴ Effective change can only come about if male-dominated cultures address women's economic and social vulnerability: their poverty, financial dependency, educational disadvantage, and obstacles to employment.⁵

Meanwhile, many in the international community have tried to stop FGM. However, some argue that attempting to forbid a practice in another culture that has existed for generations is arrogant. They argue that efforts of international organizations like the United Nations and the World Health Organization to abolish FGM are dangerous examples of ethnocentric meddling. They point to incidents like the hostile protest movement that targeted a newspaper in Sierra Leone. The movement successfully convinced the public that the newspaper's criticism of FGM was generated by outsiders trying to impose alien values on the country.⁶

On the other hand, others feel that no practice oppressing a particular groupóin this case, womenóought to be tolerated. They cite the influence of international opposition in the dismantling of apartheid in South Africa as an example of how effective global pressure can be against injustice. They reject the notion that a physically harmful practice like FGM must be understood within the appropriate cultural context and argue that only worldwide demands for change will halt FGM.

This debate is more relevant to Americans than you might think. With immigration increasing worldwide, FGM is being practiced more often in countries where it was previously unknown. In Britain, Sweden, France, and Switzerland, FGM has been outlawed for years. Here in the United States, however, an estimated 150,000 women and girls of African descent may be at risk of the rite or have already been cut.⁷

But opposition to FGM is now a part of our national human rights policy. In 1996 the U.S. Board of Immigration Appeals, a branch of the Justice Department, granted political asylum to a 19-year-old woman from Togo who said she had fled her homeland to avoid being subjected to FGM. The ruling represented a formal recognition that FGM is a form of persecution and that women who refuse to undergo the practice face threats to their freedom, physical harm, or social ostracism.⁸

That same year, Congress passed a law outlawing FGM and directing federal authorities to inform new immigrants from countries where it is commonly practiced that parents who arrange for their children to be cut here face up to five years in prison.

As individuals rooted in a society that does not practice FGM, we can applaud such a stand. But as students of sociology, we must acknowledge that culture and history may make opposing viewpoints equally valid.

¹Cited in Dugger, C. W. 1996. "Woman's plea for asylum puts tribal ritual on trial." New York Times, April 15.

²Crossette, B. 1995. "Female genital mutilation by immigrants is becoming cause for concern in U.S." New York Times, December 10.

³Walker, A., & Parmar, P. 1993. Warrior marks: Female genital mutilation and the sexual blinding of women. New York: Harcourt Brace, p. 277.

⁴Mackie, G. 1996. "Ending footbinding and infibulation: A convention account." American Sociological Review, 61, 999-1017.

⁵Gruenbaum, E. 1993. "The movement against clitoridectomy and infibulation in Sudan: Public health policy and the women's movement." In C. B. Brettell & C. F. Sargent (Eds.), Gender in cross-cultural prespective. Englewood Cliffs, NJ: Prentice-Hall.

⁶French, H. W. 1997. "Africa's culture war: Old customs, new values." New York Times, February 2.

⁷Cited in Dugger, C. W. 1996. "Woman's plea for asylum puts tribal ritual on trial." New York Times, April 15.

⁸Dugger, C. W. 1996. "U.S. grants asylum to woman fleeing genital mutilation rite." New York Times, June 14.