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Interventions to Stop Female Genital Cutting and the Evolution of the Custom: Evidence on Age at Cutting in Senegal

Interventions to Stop Female Genital Cutting and the Evolution of the Custom: Evidence on Age at... AbstractLegal sanctions and awareness campaigns are increasingly used to try to reduce female genital cutting (FGC). In this article, I show that these interventions against FGC, rather than leading to the abandonment of the practice, can have unintended and potentially harmful effects on the way FGC is performed. Using DHS data from Senegal, I find that girls born in a year and a region where the law against FGC has been legally enforced are cut almost one year earlier. No significant effect of the law is found on the prevalence of FGC. Using a unique dataset from the region of Kolda in Senegal, I find a decreasing trend in age at cutting after the year of the introduction of the law sanctioning FGC. In both cases, I interpret the decrease in age as the result of a process of de-ritualisation and individualisation of FGC due to the push towards the secrecy of the practice. http://www.deepdyve.com/assets/images/DeepDyve-Logo-lg.png Journal of African Economies Oxford University Press

Interventions to Stop Female Genital Cutting and the Evolution of the Custom: Evidence on Age at Cutting in Senegal

Camilotti, Giulia
Journal of African Economies , Volume 25 (1) – Jan 1, 2016
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References (20)

Publisher
Oxford University Press
Copyright
© The author 2015. Published by Oxford University Press on behalf of the Centre for the Study of African Economies. All rights reserved. For permissions, please email: journals. permissions@oup.com
ISSN
0963-8024
eISSN
1464-3723
DOI
10.1093/jae/ejv013
Publisher site
See Article on Publisher Site

Abstract

AbstractLegal sanctions and awareness campaigns are increasingly used to try to reduce female genital cutting (FGC). In this article, I show that these interventions against FGC, rather than leading to the abandonment of the practice, can have unintended and potentially harmful effects on the way FGC is performed. Using DHS data from Senegal, I find that girls born in a year and a region where the law against FGC has been legally enforced are cut almost one year earlier. No significant effect of the law is found on the prevalence of FGC. Using a unique dataset from the region of Kolda in Senegal, I find a decreasing trend in age at cutting after the year of the introduction of the law sanctioning FGC. In both cases, I interpret the decrease in age as the result of a process of de-ritualisation and individualisation of FGC due to the push towards the secrecy of the practice.

Journal

Journal of African Economies – Oxford University Press

Published: Jan 1, 2016

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