How to Change People/(Social Norms), Part 2

About 3 months ago, I attended a global health conference at UCSD. I had seen a listing of the presentations before hand and this workshop was one of the main reasons I wanted to attend the conference was for a workshop called “Changing Social Norms. Ending Female Genital Cutting (FGC).” I didn't know much about it, but really, when else do you hear about these things?

It turns out that FGC is extremely common in Saharan Africa. The WHO even estimates that 100-140 million women are living with it’s consequences and over 92 million of them in Africa [1]. This was a far bigger number than I thought. Can you imagine being a part of a society with a disgusting ingrained practice in that causes unnecessary pain, infections, and permanently diminishes pleasure?

What’s the method to stop it? Most experts turn to the process by which foot-binding in China ended for a good example of how persisting social norms can change quickly [2]. Just over a hundred years ago, millions of female babies had their feet bound and broken for the sake of beauty. But this 10th century practice changed within a several decades and was eventually banned in 1912

So how did they do it? The successful method could hopefully be carried out to ending awful practices like female genital cutting. Oddly enough, after reading the blueprint for abolition, I was reminded of fundraising for a canned food drive or for magazine subscribers in Boy Scouts. According to Politial Theorist, Gerry Mackie PhD who has written several lengthy articles on social norms, it goes like this.

Step 1 “They [organizations] carried out a modern education campaign, which explained that the rest of the world did not bind women's feet.” (Canned Food Drive: There are starving people outside of your doorstep)

Step 2 “They explained the advantages of natural feet and the disadvantages of bound feet in Chinese cultural terms.” (Canned Food Drive: With each can, a child is fed for a day...you might not use the cans but others would.)

Step 3 "They formed natural-foot societies, whose members publicly pledged not to bind their daughters' feet nor to let their sons marry women with bound feet." (Canned Food Drive: Can you pledge to bring X number of cans on this day? There are many others who are doing it also.)

This is what a movement within UNICEF does called the Tostan Community Empowerment Program. And the results training women in villages within Senegal are astounding. “Immediately before the programme began, 7 out of 10 women stated that they wished to have their daughters cut. At the end of the programme, this proportion had fallen to approximately 1 in 10 among women who had participated in the programme, and 2 in 10 among women who had not participated directly, but lived in the same village.” [3]. The most surprising statistic to me is that 2 out of 10 women who didn’t even participate in the program changed their beliefs. Obviously, most members of the community were just practicing because everyone else was. Probably something similar to fashion trends US (without the same consequences).

“As of December of 2004, these meetings have led to public declarations by 1,527 communities, or approximately 30 per cent of the population estimated to practice FGM/C in Senegal in 1997.” FGC is still common in certain places in the globe, but at least we know we know eradication is possible and organizations are working to stop it.

Citations
1. WHO factsheet.
2. Footbinding in China.
3. UNICEF. Page 24.