Abstract
BackgroundFemale genital mutilation (FGM) is still widespread in Egyptian society. It is strongly entrenched in local tradition and culture and has a strong link to the position of women. To eradicate the practice a major attitudinal change is a required for which an improvement in the social position of women is a prerequisite. This study examines the relationship between Egyptian women’s social positions and their attitudes towards FGM, and investigates whether the spread of anti-FGM attitudes is related to the observed improvements in the position of women over time.MethodsChanges in attitudes towards FGM are tracked using data from the Egypt Demographic and Health Surveys from 1995 to 2014. Multilevel logistic regressions are used to estimate 1) the effects of indicators of a woman’s social position on her attitude towards FGM, and 2) whether these effects change over time.ResultsLiterate, better educated and employed women are more likely to oppose FGM. Initially growing opposition to FGM was related to the expansion of women’s education, but lately opposition to FGM also seems to have spread to other segments of Egyptian society.ConclusionsThe improvement of women’s social position has certainly contributed to the spread of anti-FGM attitudes in Egyptian society. Better educated and less traditional women were at the heart of this change, and formed the basis from where anti-FGM sentiment has spread over wider segments of Egyptian society.
Highlights
Female genital mutilation (FGM) is still widespread in Egyptian society
International organizations emphasize female empowerment, improving women’s position in society, and reducing gender inequality as a strategy to eradicate FGM [25] This paper examines the hypothesis that anti-FGM attitudes initially emerge among the more ‘modernized’ segments of Egyptian society, where women are believed to be more empowered, and subsequently spread from there to the rest of society
Because the Demographic and Health Surveys is a series of standardized surveys, identical procedures were used for both the sampling and data collection in all Egypt Demographic and Health Survey (EDHS) waves
Summary
Female genital mutilation (FGM) is still widespread in Egyptian society. It is strongly entrenched in local tradition and culture and has a strong link to the position of women. Female genital mutilation (FGM) is still a common practice in many African countries. The World Health Organization (WHO) estimates that worldwide between 100 and 140 million women have been cut [1], of which about 91.5 million in Africa They estimate that in Africa about three million girls are circumcised every year. In Egypt, FGM remains nearly universal: over 95 % of women between 15 and 49 years old are circumcised, and this proportion remains fairly constant across all cohorts [2 and own calculations]. By 2005, more than 70 % of the cuttings were performed by doctors and only 22 % by Dayas [2]
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