‘ALTERNATIVE’ FEMALE GENITAL CUTTING DISCOURSES? A STUDY OF THE MAASAI OF KAJIADO, KENYA

ABSTRACT

The study examines knowledge construction on female genital cutting (FGC) and

notions of womanhood and the resultant discourses by the Maasai community in

Kajiado, Kenya. There has been a global upsurge in anti-FGC interventions by the

international community, feminist movements, national governments, and NGOs

in the last three decades which have described FGC as a barbaric practice that

violates the health and human rights of docile and helpless women and girls.

Kajiado has been a recipient of those interventions but reduction in prevalence of

FGC has been slow in the community. This study interrogates how the Maasai

construct FGC and womanhood. The study utilized qualitative methods in data

collection and analysis: 34 in-depth interviews of men and women above 18 years

of age and three focus group discussions of naturally occurring women‘s groups.

Overall, the study reveals a multiplicity of discourses on FGC in the community.

Five of these are steeped in Maasai culture and include the supernatural, social

transition, sexual morality, economic benefit and social integration discourses.

The other five are influenced by the anti-FGC campaign messages and other

modern ‗alternative‘ concepts and include the medical, modernistic, sexual

fulfilment, bodily integrity discourse, and the illegality discourses. Another key

finding of the study is that although the Maasai demonstrate familiarity with the

anti-FGC arguments, they have not owned those arguments as it is demonstrated

by their regular use of the phrase ―they say‖ in their reference to those arguments.

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The older women‘s categorical rejection of claims in those arguments that FGC

results in loss of sex drive, excessive bleeding, difficult child birth and death

clearly shows that exposure to the anti-FGC arguments does not necessarily

convince targets of the interventions. The study also found out that Maasai

women are not passive victims of patriarchy and tradition but are rather

organizing themselves into groups called „chamas‟ from which they are clearly

prioritizing their agency through the raising of independent incomes, access to

education and skills training for themselves and their daughters to free themselves

from subservience to men, culture and confinement to the domestic sphere.

Clearly, FGC is not considered by Maasai women as big a problem as lack of

economic independence and education. Further, the assumed equivalence of

agency of women with rejection of FGC is undermined by the fact that young

educated women are not automatically renouncing FGC, some are actually

demanding it. Based on these findings the study recommends an all-inclusive

community engagement strategy by the change agents that will clearly empower

the Maasai people to construct development in their own terms by naming their

major concerns and identifying culture-specific ways to address those concerns.

In so doing, the community will be encouraged to get more involved in their own

culture change and development. This study contributes to the scarce literature on

knowledge construction on female genital cutting, one of the most hotly debated

issues regarding African women, by practicing communities. By highlighting the

intricacies of the contexts within which this construction is done, these findings

rend support to the social constructionist perspectives.