The Movement against Clitoridectomy and Infibulation in Sudan: Public Health Policy and the Women's Movement

Abstract

[Ellen Gruenbaum is a PhD Candidate in the Department of Anthropology at the University of Connecticut, having received graduate training in a joint program with the Department of Community Medicine in Social Sciences and Health Services. She spent five years in Sudan, during which time she served on the faculty of the Department of Anthropology and Sociology at the University of Khartoum and carried out research projects for the Sudanese National Economic and Social Research Council, the F.A.O., and the Ministry of Social Affairs, as well as completing her doctoral research. The title of her dissertation, which she expects to complete in 1982, is “Health Services, Health and Development in Sudan: The Impact on the Gezira Irrigated Scheme.” For the past two years she has been Research Associate in the Department of Community Medicine at the University of the Connecticut School of Medicine, coordinating the Cross‐National Study of Health Systems Program. She is also coeditor of the Comparative Health Systems Newsletter.]

Socio‐cultural dynamics of female genital cutting: Research findings, gaps, and directions

“…Hayes (1975) published a research-based article on female genital mutilation in Sudan, linking the practices to fertility control, women's roles, and patrilineal social structure. Assaad (1980), Boddy (1982), Cloudsley (1983), and the author (Gruenbaum 1982) later analysed the value of the practices in their cultural contexts. Although these writings recognized that female circumcision was not very pleasant or healthy, the practices were understood to have symbolic vitality (Boddy, 1982) and social consequences for marriageability.…”

“…Some have argued that more urgent attention should be paid to women's inequality of opportunity and power, as well as the conditions of war, famine, high rates of disease and infant and child mortality, and lack of educational opportunities (Gruenbaum 1982, see also Morsy 1991). One effect was that some promoted a gradualist programme of change in FGC, promoting modification to less harmful practices and 'medicalization' to lessen the risks.…”

Virginity Testing: Managing Sexuality in a Maturing HIV/AIDS Epidemic

“…Seldom in the debate are the two sides perceived to share common ground. Much of the controversy that surrounds virginity testing in South Africa recalls the ongoing debate over female circumcision in other parts of Africa (e.g., Assad 1980;Boddy 1991;Gordon 1991;Gruenbaum 1982Gruenbaum , 1996Obermeyer 1999). And although the two practices are very different in nature, both are viewed as socially oppressive.…”

Female genital cutting in the news media: A content analysis

“…On the other hand, Gruenbaum (1982) criticizes top-down approaches to combat FGC and instead argues for the importance of having indigenous women involved in all components of anti-FGC efforts. It has been further argued that working to stop FGC without subscribing to cultural relativism would be ethnocentric and ineffective (Van der Kwaak, 1992).…”