Abstract
In Sweden, as well as in an international context, professionals are urged to acquire knowledge about possible health effects of female genital cutting (FGC) in order to tackle prevention and care in relation to the practice. While professionals are guided by policies and interventions focusing on medical effects of FGC, some scholars have cautioned that many popular beliefs about health risks rest on inconclusive evidence. The way professionals understand and respond to health information about FGC has in this context largely been left unexamined. This article aims to provide a qualitative exploration of how professionals in Sweden approach adolescent sexual and reproductive healthcare encounters in relation to acquired knowledge about FGC, using menstrual pain as an empirical example. The analysis shows that there was a tendency in counselling to differentiate young migrant women’s menstrual complaints from ordinary menstrual pain, with professionals understanding pain complaints either in terms of FGC or as culturally influenced. The study shows how professionals navigated their various sources of knowledge where FGC awareness worked as a lens through which young women’s health complaints were understood. Biomedical knowledge and culture-specific expectations and assumptions regarding menstrual pain also informed counselling. Finally, the article discusses how FGC awareness about health risks was used constructively as a tool to establish rapport and take a history on both menstrual pain and FGC. The analysis also recognises potential pitfalls of the approaches used, if not based in well-informed policies and interventions in the first place.
Highlights
Female genital cutting (FGC), referred to as female genital mutilation (FGM),1 involves a range of genital alteration procedures performed on girls for non-medical reasons
Three themes were identified in the thematic analysis in terms of professionals’ approaches and strategies in relation to menstrual pain in young women with FGC: (1) ‘Female genital cutting as a presumed cause of menstrual pain: medical explanatory frameworks’; (2) ‘A constructivist approach to menstrual pain’ (3); ‘Menstrual pain as a working tool in clinical practice’
This study provided a qualitative exploration of how professionals in schools, healthcare and social services approach sexual and reproductive healthcare encounters in relation to awareness about FGC
Summary
Female genital cutting (FGC), referred to as female genital mutilation (FGM), involves a range of genital alteration procedures performed on girls for non-medical reasons. Whereas many studies highlight increased health risks and, for example, have found a higher likelihood of reportings of genital pain (Lurie et al, 2020) or less sexual satisfaction (Berg & Denison, 2012), other studies on sexuality document frequent reports of orgasm, desire and satisfaction (Abdulcadir et al, 2016; Catania et al, 2007; Obermeyer, 2005) and no statistically significant differences on genital pain between women with or without FGC (Alsibiani & Rouzi, 2010) This great variation underscores the challenges in conducting research on sexual health outcomes related to FGC. Many descriptions of presumed health effects fail to discriminate between different forms of procedures or how they are performed e.g. in a medicalised setting, by a medically trained person at a hospital or at home, or under less sterile conditions (Obermeyer, 2005; Earp & Johnsdotter, 2021; PPAN 2012).
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