Gender masked or self-inflicted pain: female circumcision, eradication and persistence in Central Kenya

This paper has attempted to answer the question why female circumcision persists despite increasing knowledge about its harm to womens health. We argue that the persistence is not due to being deeply rooted in the social and cultural systems where it is practised. Rather it is the failure to base eradication on an understanding of the meaning of female circumcision the gender power dynamics within which it is placed the social normalisation of power and control and the way these are socially constructed and organised. The eradication efforts have however transformed a practice that among the Kikuyu was a public action controlled and regulated through the public gaze into an individual secret action. The elaborate and sexual educational ceremony became a simple act of cutting the clitoris the very aspect that poses threat to womens health. In our view it is the invisibility that female circumcision has assumed that makes prevention challenging. (excerpt)