After skimming through the issue briefs linked at A Portal on Women, Peace, and Security, I saw the practice of female genital mutilation. I have always wanted to learn more about this and researched it further in depth. This is a very controversial issue having to do with sexual and reproductive health that is performed in many countries throughout the world. It includes procedures that purposely alter or injure female genitals for non-medical reasons. It has absolutely no health benefits for women and can cause severe bleeding, problems urinating, and potential childbirth problems. This process is usually performed on girls from newborns until age fifteen and currently about 100-140 million girls are living with the consequences of it today.
There are many reasons for doing this, many of which are cultural. In some cultures, it is what has always been done to girls and the social pressure to conform helps to continue the practice. In other cases, husbands are fearful that their wives will not remain faithful. To be sure that their wives will not cheat on them, they perform some sort of genital surgery, such as "closing her up". When the husband is ready to perform sexual acts with her, he opens her back up which is obviously a very painful process. In some communities, women are thought to be clean and beautiful, and so they must remove these genitals that are thought to be male or unclean.
Female genital mutilation is recognized internationally as a violation of the human rights of girls and women. They never get a say in whether or not it happens to them and it is a very painful process. However, it is hard to get the people that perform this practice to stop it. It is a tradition, and something that their grandparents, great-grandparents, and great- great- grandparents have gone through. It is even common for mothers to force their girls to go through the process because they remember it as being an important time in their life when they were younger.
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