The clitoris is also believed to induce aggressiveness in women and encourage promiscuous behavior. On the other hand, uncircumcised women risk being treated as men their funeral and burial rites may be performed as if they are men because the presence of the clitoris makes a woman masculine. The belief is that circumcised girls can be trained on societal morals and values before they assume a larger role in the community as wives and mothers. They are taught how to care for their families, homes, and uphold themselves in the community. In some societies, circumcised girls receive mentorship to prepare them for marriage and meaningful lives. In some communities, the practice is tied to traditional religion and in others, it is associated with Islam. Some studies reported that traditions and social norms pressure girls to undergo circumcision: women who are not circumcised often experience ridicule from peers and rivals. Higher occurrence of FGM in Northern Ghana has been attributed to the mixture of the people and culture of that part of the country with Burkina Faso, Togo and Mali, where the practice is more common. England and the United States used FGM to treat hysteria, lesbianism, masturbation and other female deviances in the 1940s and 1950s. Historical antecedents and social research revealed that FGM was practiced by the Phoenicians, Hittites and ancient Egyptians. FGM has been in existence for many years, but it only generated international activism when it was widely discussed in the nineteen-eighties and early nineteen-nineties. In the Bawku Municipality and Pusiga District, sixty one percent of women were reported to have undergone the procedure. FGM is predominately practiced among the northern tribes of Ghana and the magnitude of the practice varies across regions and districts. Globally, an estimated two million women are circumcised and four percent of those genitally mutilated live in Ghana. The practice occurs in 28 African countries with varying prevalence within and across countries. The content is solely the responsibility of the authors and does not necessarily represent the official views of the National Institutes of Health.Ĭompeting interests: The authors have declared that no competing interests exist.įemale Genital Mutilation (FGM) is deeply ingrained in many African societies. Thus, the Female Genital Mutilation project data are available upon request from the Navrongo Health Research Centre IRB Administrator: Cletus Tindana ( Research reported in this publication was supported by the Fogarty International Center of the National Institutes of Health under Award Number D43TW009345. The Navrongo Health Research Centre Institutional Review Board (NHRCIRB) has restricted the sharing of these data publicly because the data contain sensitive participant information. The work is made available under the Creative Commons CC0 public domain dedication.ĭata Availability: The data used in this study come from the Female Genital Mutilation study, whose authors are affiliated with the Navrongo Health Research Centre. This is an open access article, free of all copyright, and may be freely reproduced, distributed, transmitted, modified, built upon, or otherwise used by anyone for any lawful purpose. Received: JAccepted: MaPublished: April 22, 2019 PLoS ONE 14(4):Įditor: Yeetey Akpe Kwesi Enuameh, Kwame Nkrumah University of Science and Technology, GHANA Citation: Sakeah E, Debpuur C, Aborigo RA, Oduro AR, Sakeah JK, Moyer CA (2019) Persistent female genital mutilation despite its illegality: Narratives from women and men in northern Ghana.
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