Journal Article

Changing cultural attitudes towards female genital cutting

Mohmmed Zaid, Nadia Ahmed, Efferson, Charles, Fehr, Ernst, El Fadil Ahmed, Hilal, Vogt, Sonja

2016

Overview

Entertaining movies addressing both individual values and marriageability can provide a way to change cultural attitudes towards female genital cutting within certain cultures. Attitudes towards female genital cutting As the world starts to feel smaller and globalization pulls those with different cultural attitudes together, navigating the inevitable social and cultural conflicts that result will increase in importance. One such contentious and controversial cultural practice is female genital cutting. Ernst Fehr and colleagues used control and treatment movies to educate societies in which cutting occurs and measured implicit attitudes towards cutting in a randomized experiment. These treatment movies raised awareness and changed attitudes towards cutting in a positive manner as compared to controls, with a modest persistent effect. Highlighting discordant views within a specific society on culturally controversial practices may allow for cultural change. As globalization brings people with incompatible attitudes into contact, cultural conflicts inevitably arise. Little is known about how to mitigate conflict and about how the conflicts that occur can shape the cultural evolution of the groups involved. Female genital cutting is a prominent example 1 , 2 , 3 . Governments and international agencies have promoted the abandonment of cutting for decades, but the practice remains widespread with associated health risks for millions of girls and women 4 , 5 . In their efforts to end cutting, international agents have often adopted the view that cutting is locally pervasive and entrenched 1 . This implies the need to introduce values and expectations from outside the local culture. Members of the target society may view such interventions as unwelcome intrusions 1 , 2 , 3 , 6 , 7 , 8 , 9 , and campaigns promoting abandonment have sometimes led to backlash 1 , 7 , 8 , 10 , 11 as they struggle to reconcile cultural tolerance with the conviction that cutting violates universal human rights 1 , 9 . Cutting, however, is not necessarily locally pervasive and entrenched 1 , 3 , 12 . We designed experiments on cultural change that exploited the existence of conflicting attitudes within cutting societies. We produced four entertaining movies that served as experimental treatments in two experiments in Sudan, and we developed an implicit association test to unobtrusively measure attitudes about cutting. The movies depart from the view that cutting is locally pervasive by dramatizing members of an extended family as they confront each other with divergent views about whether the family should continue cutting. The movies significantly improved attitudes towards girls who remain uncut, with one in particular having a relatively persistent effect. These results show that using entertainment to dramatize locally discordant views can provide a basis for applied cultural evolution without accentuating intercultural divisions.

• Publisher: Nature Publishing Group UK,Nature Publishing Group
• Subject: 631/181/1403 / 692/499 / 706/134 / 706/689/523 / Attitudes / Circumcision, Female - adverse effects / Circumcision, Female - education / Circumcision, Female - ethnology / Cultural change / Cultural Characteristics / Cultural Evolution / Cultural values / Experiments / Female / Female circumcision / Females / Globalization / Health Knowledge, Attitudes, Practice - ethnology / Health risks / Human Rights - education / Humanities and Social Sciences / Humans / letter / Local culture / Marriage - ethnology / Motion Pictures / multidisciplinary / Psychological aspects / Science / Social aspects / Social Change / Sudan / Women's Health - ethnology