Female Genital Cutting: Cultural Rights and Rites of Defiance in Northern Tanzania

Abstract

This article reviews campaigns against female genital cutting (FGC) directed at Maasai communities in northern Tanzania. The authors argue that campaigns against FGC using educational, health, legal, and human rights-based approaches are at times ineffective and counterproductive when they frame the practice as a "tradition" rooted in a "primitive" and unchanging culture. We suggest that development interventions that do not address local contexts of FGC, including the complex politics and history of interventions designed to eradicate it, can in fact reify and reinscribe the practice as central to Maasai cultural identity.

Changing practices and shifting meanings of female genital cutting among the Maasai of Arusha and Manyara regions of Tanzania

“…Because many girls are being cut as infants or weeks before the ceremony, female genital cutting no longer carries the meaning of passage from childhood to adulthood: girls are not considered women until the traditional ceremony publicly announces them as adults, several weeks or even years after the cutting. In other words, and as confirmed by other studies (Winterbottom, Koomen, and Burford 2009), the ceremony, rather than the actual genital cutting, carries the meaning of passage from girl-to womanhood. The cutting then may still carry the meaning of preventing illnesses or the reduction of promiscuity for some.…”

“…Statistical indicators that examine the prevalence across different ethnic groups in Tanzania are lacking. However, Winterbottom, Koomen, and Burford (2009) argue that, since the Maasai make up a large proportion of the population of Manyara and Arusha regions -which correspond roughly to the Maasai District of colonial Tanganyika -it can be assumed that the prevalence among Maasai in these regions is high. Although there are huge differences between different Maasai clans, the high prevalence of female genital cutting at 73.2% reported among Kenyan Maasai suggests that the prevalence among Tanzanian Maasai might be high too (28 Too Many 2013b).…”

“…However, this portrayal underestimates the capability for critical thought and reinterpretation of cultural values (Ferguson 1990;Hodgson 2001). Various scholars have illustrated how the Maasai actively engage with social change, both from within the community and in dialogue with outsiders seeking to change Maasai society (Butt 2015;Fraser et al 2012;Smith 2015;Winterbottom, Koomen, and Burford 2009). Winterbottom and colleagues (2009) also indicate that several Maasai women's organisations have been successful in implementing alternative rites of passage that abandon female genital cutting.…”

“…Women are associated with this system (they are affiliated to the age-group they 'danced' with as young girls) but are not part of it (Talle 1988(Talle , 2007. Instead they are distinguished by four life phases: entito (young, pre-pubescent girls before circumcision), esiankiki (circumcised young unmarried or married woman with young or no children), entasat (older woman with circumcised children), and koko (grandmother ;Coast 2007;Spencer 1988;Talle 1988Talle , 2007Winterbottom, Koomen, and Burford 2009).…”

“…Female genital cutting is understood as a violation of women's and children's rights and an expression of gender inequality (UN This debate is also present with regards to female genital cutting in the Maasai community. Development projects have tried to encourage Maasai to abandon female genital cutting, calling them 'backward' or 'stubborn traditionalists' in response to their perceived resistance to cultural change (Mohamed 2011;Winterbottom, Koomen, and Burford 2009). This paper engages with the above debates and argues that Maasai culture and the practice of female genital cutting are not static but actively challenged and reinterpreted from both outside and within the community.…”