This week as we study some of the issues of childhood, we take up two health issues that greatly affect the well-being of girls and young women. The first is female genital cutting, sometimes referred to as female genital mutilation or female circumcision. In some societies, coming of age ceremonies or rites of passage to womanhood have limited girls' human rights in the sense of both violating their bodily integrity and limiting access to education and other choices. Female genital mutilation is one such practice that stems from the social norms of a girl's tribe or ethnic group, and serves to define her in the context of her community. Some two or three million girls every year, are at risk of undergoing the procedure, which involves the excision of female genitalia for aesthetic and/or cultural reasons. It is estimated that between 100 and 140 million women, mostly in Africa, have undergone the ritual of female genital cutting during the last 50 or 60 years. To clarify the terminology, female genital mutilation is the phrase that is used by the World Health Organization to identify the ritual of cutting female genitalia. In the past, the term female circumcision was used, implying that the surgery bore some resemblance to male circumcision. This is a misleading comparison, because male circumcision involves removing only part of the fore skin of the penis without impairing sexual function. The practice experienced by girls is clitorectomy, the partial or complete removal of the clitoris, a female sexual organ. Or even the removal of parts of the labia, with lifelong side effects, and significant health and sexual impairment. The term female genital mutilation is now more widely used both by the World Health Organization and by many African groups advocating the elimination of the practice. Many other organizations working to eradicate the practice refer to it as "Female genital cutting" out of respect for women who have undergone the ritual and do not wish to consider themselves mutilated. Female genital cutting is prevalent in about 28 African countries, and among a few minority groups in Asia, affecting from 1% of women in countries like Uganda and Cameroon, to about 98% of women in other countries such as Sudan and Somalia. The nature of the practice differs from country to country. With more limited forms of cutting in Sierra Leone, for example, to extreme forms in Djibouti and Somalia, for example. Female genital cutting is illegal in at least 17 of the 28 African countries in which it is practiced, and it has also been made illegal in a number of industrialized countries where immigrants or refugees from Africa may reside. Female genital cutting has no health value. Still, the value of a girl in some societies is closely tied to this tradition. Once the procedure has been carried out, parents and the larger community and often the girls themselves, begin to see school as an unnecessary part of life. In some countries, undergoing the procedure results in girls entering a kind of community or society which gives them a very special status. Please read the section of Chapter Three in my book which describes the different types of female genital cutting and the health consequences of the procedure. As with every chapter in the book, at the end of Chapter Three are several examples of women's groups working to address the issue of female genital cutting.
