by Aimee Molloy
Whenever Molly was given the opportunity to present the Tostan approach, people often responded with skepticism, believing the public declarations that had taken place to be isolated one-day events, the result of Tostan staff visiting a village and telling them to end the practice, which seemed too easy. They didn’t grasp that the decisions came at the end of a three-year education program, followed by months of outreach to interconnected villages. At these conferences, Molly listened to anti-FGC presenters describing their own approaches to end the practice. One emphasized the importance of passing and enforcing laws against FGC, encouraging people to call the police to report any incidents of the practice. Another approach targeted the traditional cutters, who would be brought together for a three-day seminar, during which they would be offered an alternative source of income to cutting. At the end of the three days, the cutters would ceremonially bury their knives, declare an end to their practice, and be given a diploma and the funds to pursue another project. Another approach was to host meetings in communities, during which known anti-FGC activists used large plastic models of women’s sexual organs to explain FGC and its consequences, urging people to stop the practice.
Molly disagreed with the narrowness of these approaches. Encouraging neighbors to report one another would divide communities, and paying cutters to stop did nothing to address the demand for the practice. Even if some did pledge to stop, others could be found or people could cross borders to have the procedure done elsewhere. But the approaches that most bothered the villagers—and, by extension, Molly—were those that tried to bring about change by shocking or shaming. It was obvious to Molly that the techniques of publicly condemning the tradition and the women who practiced it, through bloody posters or radio and television messaging (“Stop now!”), only made women feel defensive, and any strategy that didn’t take into account the existing social dynamics that made it almost impossible for individual families to stop the practice on their own was doomed to fail.
She also knew that it wasn’t just the strategy that mattered. It was also the language. The terminology used to describe this practice had, over the years, undergone a number of important evolutions. When it first caught the attention of the public beyond the practicing communities, it was most commonly referred to as “female circumcision.” This term, however, was quickly considered flawed, as it drew an inaccurate parallel with male circumcision, which unlike female genital cutting sometimes carries a medical benefit: namely, helping to prevent the transmission of HIV/AIDS. In its place, many activists and NGOs began to use the term “female genital mutilation,” or FGM. Thought to better reflect the practice’s deeply rooted gender inequalities and profound physical and social consequences, it first became popular in the late 1970s. In 1990, the term was adopted at the third conference of the Inter-African Committee on Traditional Practices Affecting the Health of Women and Children in Addis Ababa. The next year, the World Health Organization—in the hope that the term would create a clear linguistic distinction from male circumcision, and to emphasize the gravity and harm of the act—recommended the United Nations adopt the term FGM, which they largely did when referencing the practice.
But this term and much of the accompanying language—calling the practice “barbaric” and “primitive” and referring to it as torture—was highly problematic at the village level. It deeply offended villagers who certainly did not believe they were “mutilating” or intentionally harming their daughters. While Molly had, in the beginning, used the term “female genital mutilation” herself, she decided to abandon it in favor of the less judgmental term “female genital cutting,” largely at the request of Demba, Ourèye, and Maimouna. In the months since the Diabougou declaration, Demba had continued his social mobilization efforts, traveling to hundreds more villages to educate his relatives about the movement under way and to encourage them to organize a public declaration of their own. He’d begun to notice, he told Molly, that any language that implied judgment, such as the words “mutilation” or “barbaric,” only served to shut down dialogue.
This issue was a thorny one that continued to plague Molly for years, as some representatives of organizations often voiced frustration at the use of the term FGC, arguing that any attempt to water down the language just hurt the cause by failing to emphasize the gravity of the situation. Molly didn’t agree. “Judging or shocking people rarely proves effective in getting them to see another side,” she argues, “or to change their views on any topic.” in this case, her instincts told her to follow the lead of the villagers.
Whenever she was confronted by this, Molly thought back to a children’s story she loved, about a competition between the sun and the wind that transpired after both spotted a man walking alone down a road.
“I bet I can make that man take off his coat sooner than you,” the wind said to the sun.
“Go ahead and try,” the sun replied. “We’ll see who wins.”
The wind huffed and puffed with all his might, hoping to blow the man’s jacket right off him, but this just made the man pull his coat more tightly around his body.
“Let me try now,” said the smiling sun, after several minutes of watching the wind nearly exhaust itself. With much gentleness, the sun beamed warm rays of sunlight down on the man. The man loosened his grip, and soon, basking in the warm sunlight, he happily removed his coat.
20
Jëf, Gëstu (From Practice to Theory)
Four months after the Diabougou declaration, in June 1998, a junior research fellow named Gerry Mackie sat in a quiet classroom at Oxford University in England proctoring an exam. It was a boring assignment, and Gerry passed the time flipping through a copy of the International Herald Tribune he’d hidden on his lap under the desk. On one of the last pages, he came across an article about the practice of female genital cutting in Senegal that made him catch his breath. “Despite outraged arguments … that cutting off genitals violates girls’ rights, Western exhortations have had little effect in Africa. In fact, they have often been met with defensive hostility by Africans. … But now, in this small West African country [of Senegal], with barely eight million people, one education program is having dramatic success.” The journalist, Vivian Walt, went on to detail Tostan’s work, the pioneering efforts of the women of Malicounda Bambara, and the public declaration held in Diabougou. After re-reading the article a second and third time, Gerry spent the remaining hours of the exam feeling at first dumbfounded and then exuberant. As soon as the exam was over, Gerry Mackie, the forty-eight-year-old Oxford academic, ran out to St. Giles Street and, under the canopy of plane trees, literally jumped up and down.
That night he wrote Molly a letter, explaining that two years earlier he’d published an article in an academic journal called the American Sociological Review in which he posited a theory about how female genital cutting might end in one generation. And what Tostan was doing sounded just like an application of that theory.
In his paper Gerry compared the practice of FGC to foot-binding, a common practice in China that is thought to have been in place for a thousand years, starting sometime around the tenth century. Like FGC, foot-binding was considered necessary for proper marriage and family honor. The practice typically took place when a girl was between six and eight years old and involved bending and breaking her toes as they were pressed toward the sole of her foot. Her feet would then remain wrapped in this position until each had reset into the ideal shape: a four-inch-long appendage. The process was extremely painful and, afterward, girls could rarely walk without support, thus keeping them largely housebound. The practice often led to infection, ulceration, gangrene, paralysis, and even death. Like FGC, foot-binding was considered a tradition of the women, who were primarily the ones who defended and perpetuated it.
Despite the efforts of many well-meaning organizations endeavoring to bring an end to the dangerous tradition, the practice was so deeply entrenched and considered absolutely vital to a young girl’s future, it was commonl
y believed that it would take many generations to end it.
Until a woman named Mrs. Archibald Little got involved.
Born Alicia Bewicke in 1845 in England, she settled in China in 1887 after marrying Archibald Little, a successful entrepreneur who lived in Chongqing, in south-central China. Unlike many wives of expatriates, Alicia Little studied Chinese, taught English, and traveled extensively throughout the interior of China to rural villages typically not on the route of foreign women. She had always been sensitive to the practice of foot-binding, and despite the stories she heard of the pain it caused girls and the problems they suffered afterward, she didn’t morally condemn it, as many Europeans did. Rather, she set out to understand it. She spoke to people who practiced it and learned that a mother’s decision to bind her daughter’s feet was considered an act of love, one that would ensure a proper marriage, protect the virtue of the girl, and bring respect to her family. Mrs. Little also paid close attention to the efforts that had been tried—and had failed—to convince women to reform.
One day, during her travels, she made a surprising discovery. As she entered one town, many of the women ran to greet her. She had never seen women in China do this before, as most had been hobbled by their bound feet. After asking the parents why they had chosen not to have their daughters’ feet bound, Mrs. Little learned that the women had decided as an entire community to abandon the practice so no one girl would suffer the consequences on her own. The experience was a turning point for Mrs. Little, helping her understand the need for collective abandonment, rather than a decision by one individual. As she saw it, this was perhaps a strategy that could be replicated, helping bring about change on a wider scale.
She became involved in a reform movement seeking to accomplish three things: through a modern education campaign, to explain to Chinese women that the rest of the world did not bind their girls’ feet; to explore the advantages of natural feet and the disadvantages of bound feet in Chinese cultural terms; and finally, to form natural-foot societies whose members publicly pledged not to bind their daughters’ feet nor allow their sons to marry women with bound feet. The pledge associations were critical.
At the core of this, Mackie pointed out, was an important idea from game theory known as the Schelling convention. Applied to foot-binding, the essential insight is the interdependence of families’ decisions: what one family chooses depends on what other families choose. In other words, a family in an intra-marrying group that practices a custom related to marriageability cannot give up that custom unless enough other families in their group coordinate to do the same. As Demba Diawara seemed to know instinctively, even if every family in a community believed the custom to be wrong or undesirable, without a collective public pledge, this would not be enough to bring about its end: any family abandoning the custom on its own would ruin the future of its daughters.
In 1895, Mrs. Little helped create the Natural Foot Society of China, and she served as its first president. At the same time, a number of native Chinese-run societies had begun to spring up, demanding reform. They used the discovery Mrs. Little had found of pledge societies and catalyzed the movement, helping it spread like a grass fire. By 1907, Chinese public opinion had turned decisively against foot-binding, and—extraordinarily—the practice was considered to be largely abandoned among eastern coastal populations by 1911, just sixteen years after the founding of the Natural Foot Society.
Gerry Mackie concluded his paper with a prediction: the formation of a similar kind of pledge association in interconnected communities that practiced female genital cutting—one that included a critical mass of individuals who publicly declare a communal decision—could help bring about a swift end to the practice of FGC.
Gerry’s letter to Molly arrived at the Tostan office in Thiès five days later. As soon as Molly read it, as well as the copy of his article that he’d sent, she (as she would later put it) “went nuts.” She wrote back to him immediately.
Gerry was equally thrilled to get her response. “Since publication in 1996, I sent out my article at least two dozen times to anyone who had policy or journalistic interest,” he says. “I never once heard back.” Over the next several weeks, Molly and Gerry corresponded often, through letters, faxes, and phone calls. They finally decided to meet in Paris to discuss Tostan’s experiences in Senegal and his theory. While in France, Molly came to the realization that what Gerry was explaining to her, and the theory he posed, was going to be key to her work.
“What happened in China was astoundingly similar to what was happening in villages across Senegal,” Molly says. “In Gerry’s theory, I found a way to understand and explain the movement occurring.” He especially helped her grasp the critical importance of public declarations, which marked a shift in expectations of all those who mattered in the group.
Best of all, Gerry’s work, as well as his enthusiasm for what was taking place, lent scientific credibility (and from an Oxford academic, no less) that she hoped might help donors, other NGOs, the Western media, and the remaining skeptics understand that the three public declarations that had taken place—and the many others she sensed were imminent, from reports in the field—were not just a fluke, that maybe they really had discovered the mechanism for bringing about lasting change.
But before she could convince others that this might be the case, she knew she had to address one nagging question of her own.
ALTHOUGH SENEGAL IS NOT a particularly large nation, its fourteen regions, further divided into thirty-two departments, vary vastly. The first public declarations had happened in Bambara communities in or near the region of Thiès. Here, the Bambaras are an ethnic minority surrounded by communities of Wolof, the nation’s majority ethnic group. The Wolof do not practice FGC, and yet they are considered prestigious people and good Muslims. Molly had begun to question if the declarations occurred, in part, due to the Bambara’s proximity to a nonpracticing population, or the fact that they were a minority group practicing a tradition not embraced by the majority. Perhaps this had helped them more easily imagine an alternative.
The same dynamic was not true everywhere in Senegal, and certainly not in one area in particular: the Fouta, in northern Senegal. Extending about two hundred and fifty miles along the Senegal River and the border of southern Mauritania, it is inhabited mostly by members of the Toucouleur ethnic group, who speak the language of Pulaar. The Fouta—where the tall shepherds with their heads wrapped in indigo turbans so only their eyes show, stand out against a horizon hazed by the dust of the nearby Sahara—had always fascinated Molly. As a teacher in the village of Ndioum once explained to her, there were spirits everywhere in the Fouta: the jom mayo, who live along the depths of the Senegal River, the jom ledde, masters of the trees that inhabit the forest, and the waande, who find a home on the large, rock-like pillars of sand that dot the landscape.
The Fouta is also a land of traditions and fierce adherence to custom. Considered Senegal’s cradle of Islam, it is where the religion first found its way into the nation, and a very strict interpretation of Islam rules here, creating a highly conservative and hierarchical society in which an ancient caste system is still observed. Nobles—members of the highest caste—have a very important role in society, holding sway over the lower castes.
Tostan first began operating in seventy villages in two departments in the Fouta in 1992, and Molly had always taken extra care to be sensitive to the cultural dynamics in play. She knew the women here had very few rights and were expected to conform scrupulously to tradition and religious obligation, to be shy and reserved. She’d observed this herself while visiting the classes when they first began, noticing how the women responded to questions with their heads slightly turned to the side and spoke very softly with their head scarves pulled over their faces to cover their timidity. Compared to the region of Thiès, where 7 percent of the population adhered to the custom of female genital cutting, here it was practiced by 94 percent of women, and sometimes even the most sever
e type, after which girls were sealed shut. The procedure meant they later had to be cut open on their wedding day.
Ourèye Sall was born and raised in the Fouta, and since the declaration in Nguerigne Bambara, Molly and she had grown very close. “Girls in our villages are cut soon after birth,” Ourèye explained to Molly one afternoon over tea in her hut. “And the way we do it leads to far more serious health risks than in communities like Malicounda Bambara or Keur Simbara. Because they are cut so young, many girls spend their entire lives thinking the problems they suffer are normal and expected, part of what it means to have a female body. I know. I lived this myself.”
Ourèye shared with Molly a story neither of them would ever forget. A pregnant woman who had been sealed and was still scarred had gone into early labor, and because the woman’s vulva now blocked the baby’s head, the baby burst out, ripping apart her scarred labia, which the doctor could not sew back together. The story had deeply troubled Molly, but she also understood that broaching the subject of female genital cutting and its health consequences in a place like the Fouta carried great risks. Tostan could not simply introduce the modules on human rights and women’s health in the region without the potential for serious opposition from many different factions, especially the religious community. After the president of Senegal had voiced his support for the efforts of the women of Malicounda Bambara, one religious leader from the Fouta had sent a letter to deputies in the national assembly voicing his opposition to any efforts to end the tradition. He claimed that FGC was a religious obligation and that any woman who was not cut could not control herself around a man because the clitoris makes a woman sexually uninhibited.
At about this time Molly was offered a job opportunity to start a basic, countrywide education program elsewhere in Africa. It would have been good money and a great opportunity, but with barely a thought, she turned it down. Because now that she understood the theory behind what was happening in villages across Senegal, now that all her years of hard work may have truly unlocked a way of bringing about widespread, lasting change that could improve the lives of women and give them a sense of power, she had one pressing thought she couldn’t escape. They had proved that the Tostan approach could bring about changes in Thiès, but could it happen elsewhere, especially somewhere as conservative as the Fouta?
