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An exploration of attitudes toward female genital cutting in Nigeria

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Abstract

Female genital cutting (FGC) continues to be widespread particularly in sub-Saharan African countries. We use data from the 1999 Nigeria Demographic and Health Survey to consider factors that influence attitudes toward this procedure held by Nigerian women aged 15–49. We test four models: model 1 explores whether attitudes are consistent with a view of FGC as a social convention associated with marriageability of women. Model 2 examines the impact of modernization factors such as education and urbanization. In model 3, the influence of media and community activities are considered. Model 4 includes all of the factors in the three previous models. We find strong support for considering FGC a social convention. Modernization has minimal impact on attitudes about FGC mainly through its influence on the social convention.

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Notes

  1. Female genital cutting is also referred to as female genital mutilation (FGM) and female circumcision. We use FGC in the literature review as the terminology female circumcision minimizes the severity of the surgery in some cases and female genital mutilation is viewed as judgmental and pejorative. Female genital cutting is a more neutral term describing what takes place.

  2. We use the term “circumcision” in the methods and analysis because that is how the questions were asked to respondents in the DHS.

  3. The survey also collected information from men (N = 2,680), although these data are not used in our analysis.

  4. Of the 8,918 eligible women identified in sample households, 8,199 responded, yielding a 92% response rate.

  5. About 15% (1,257) of woman did not report an answer to this question. We omit these women from the analysis.

  6. For circumcised women, varying the educational level does have some influence on the predicted probability of favoring continuing circumcision. Setting education at zero years increases the probability of favoring continuing by about 10% for both traditional and nontraditional women; conversely, setting education at twelve years decreases the probability by about 10% from the predicted probability with mean education.

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Acknowledgments

An earlier version of this paper was presented at the 2003 Southern Demographic Association Annual meeting. We want to thank Christine Wernet for her help with earlier stages of this research. Data for this study come from the 1999 Nigeria Demographic and Health Survey, downloaded from the Demographic and Health Survey Data Archive. The opinions expressed in this paper are those of the authors.

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Authors and Affiliations

  1. Department of Sociology, Presbyterian College, Clinton, SC, 29325, USA

    Robert H. Freymeyer

  2. University of South Carolina Aiken, Aiken, SC, USA

    Barbara E. Johnson

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  1. Robert H. Freymeyer
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  2. Barbara E. Johnson
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Correspondence to Robert H. Freymeyer.

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Freymeyer, R.H., Johnson, B.E. An exploration of attitudes toward female genital cutting in Nigeria. Popul Res Policy Rev 26, 69–83 (2007). https://doi.org/10.1007/s11113-006-9016-3

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