Minority migrant men’s attitudes toward female genital mutilation: Developing strategies to engage men

Abstract

This article explores minority migrant men's attitudes towards female genital mutilation (FGM), and how these attitudes can be used to develop strategies to engage men in the eradication of FGM. Based on interviews and focus group discussions, the article finds that men's attitudes can be enabling, disabling or neutral: the identification of and variations between these need to be taken into account when developing strategies to engage men in the eradication of FGM. There is currently a window of opportunity for involving minority migrant men in the prevention of FGM and in the challenging of a minority migrant gender regime.

Female genital mutilation (FGM) is a global gendered health concern, internationally recognized as a human rights violation and a form of violence against women and girls (UN, 1989; WHO et al., 2008). More than 200 million women and girls have been subjected to the practice (UNICEF, 2016). It involves the “partial or total removal of the external female genital organs or other injury to the female genital organs for cultural, religious, or other non-medical reasons” (WHO, 2016) and can have serious implications for the sexual, reproductive, and urinary health (Ismail, 1999; Vangen, Stoltenberg, Johansen, Sundby, & Stray-Pedersen, 2002; WHO, 2016). Shortterm consequences include severe pain, shock, and wound infection, while long-term consequences include chronic pain, sexual dysfunction, and negative psychological effects (WHO, 2016). Despite it being illegal in most countries (UNFPA, 2017), nearly three million girls are reported to be at risk every year (UN, 2016), out of which half a million live in the European Union, with a further 180,000 at risk (EP (European Parliament), 2012). The overall global prevalence has declined over the last three decades, but migration processes have contributed to an increase in countries where FGM previously did not exist (Mergaert et al., 2015). In Sweden, 38,000 girls and women are the estimated victims of FGM (Forslind, 2015). Needless to say, there are profound substantial and numerical health benefits to be found by eradicating FGM. FGM has proved remarkably persistent despite nearly a century of attempts to eliminate it (UNICEF, 2013). The question is whether FGM is such a deeply rooted cultural, religious, traditional practice, then why do some communities abandon it? There are several reasons for why the prevalence of FGM has declined during the last three decades: the development and implementation of international programs led by different UN related organizations, national bans, and, related to these processes, changed cultural habits (UNICEF, 2016). However, it is still relatively unknown whether and how men, as fathers and husbands, are engaged in FGM abandonment processes.

In this article, we focus on engaging men in the process of abandonment of female genital mutilation (FGM). We examine minority men’s attitudes and ambivalences toward FGM in a migration context from an FGM normative country to a non-normative country, and we analyze men’s attitudes toward FGM and their self-perceived roles in the FGM process with a particular focus on men’s opposition to and complicity in the FGM process.

Engaging men to eradicate FGM

There is a lack of knowledge about men’s attitudes toward FGM and in particular about men’s opposition to the practice (Akinsulure-Smith & Chu, 2017). Previous research conclude that men are essential for understanding the process of FGM, but has either reduced the number of men in the research population or left them invisible in the research results (Alcaraz, González, & Solano, 2014; Berg & Denison, 2013; Gele, Kumar, Hjelde, & Sundby, 2012; Isman, Ekéus, & Berggren, 2013), although there are exceptions where the focus is on families or, less often, men (Gele, Johansen, & Sundby, 2012; Johnsdotter, Moussa, Carlbom, Aregai, & Essén, 2009; Mergaert et al., 2015; Varol, Turkmani, Black, Hall, & Dawson, 2015). Potential explanations for the exclusion of men include, first, that much FGM research have emerged out of the health framework where, for good reasons, the main priorities have been victim focused: knowledge production of the physical, sexual, and reproductive health consequences and needed health interventions have been prioritized (see, e.g., this journal). Second, there has been a focus on statistics and data gathering to measure prevalence and predict risk (EIGE (European Institute for Gender Equality), 2014; Gebremariam, Assefa, & Weldegebreal, 2016; Marcusán, Singla, Secka, Utzet, & Le Charles, 2016; Mergaert et al., 2015). The health and statistics frameworks are essential for the development of support structures, interventions and health care, but cannot contribute to explanations of its continuation and/or abandonment.

To fill this knowledge gap and contribute to the formulation of strategies that may have a positive impact on the abandonment of FGM, the article proposes to widen the health framework. We place men, empirically and theoretically, at the center of the analysis by applying a gendered framework, using concepts from critical studies on men and masculinities and engaging men frameworks. We analyze how men’s attitudes can be used to build strategies, which in turn enable or disable the engagement of men in the eradication of FGM.

There is a growing, but not new, focus on strategies to engage men in various forms of anti-violence work (Flood, 2011; Forslind, 2015; Hearn, 1998, 2012; Pease, 2008, 2017). From a feminist perspective, it can be argued that men must be involved because they are the primary perpetrators of violence and traditional notions of masculinity are associated with greater acceptance of violence (Carlson et al., 2015; Murnen, Wright, & Kaluzny, 2002). To challenge traditional notions of “violent masculinity,” it is the key to engage in critical reflection about ones’ own practices and locations (Flood, 2011). Such reflection is more likely to be successful when responsive to the specific cultural, economic, and contextual concerns of the local community (Carlson et al., 2015), which raises the issue of which community one belongs. It is a particular pertinent issue when dealing with migrant minorities. Men may have a positive role to play and may benefit from the ending of violence, so that men’s critical reflection on their own roles ideally enables “oppositionality” (Johansson, 2004) toward FGM, that is, a critical stance toward men’s privileges. However, engaging in reflection to undermine the patriarchal privileges that underpin men’s violence against women also includes costs to men (Flood, 2015). Men, as individuals and as a group, benefit from the continuation of violence as it upholds a gender regime, which privileges men. Men may therefore be complicit (Connell, 1995) in the continuation of FGM by not challenging men’s privileges in relation to women and other men.

Despite these ambivalences and tensions surrounding men’s complicity and oppositionality, efforts to include men in the wider anti-violence work have been found essential to the success of such work. Using these tools, we analyze how ethnic minority, Muslim, migrant men of different generations can be complicit in and/or opposed to the oppression of girls and women through the practice of FGM, and how men can be engaged in the abandonment of FGM to, in the long run, promote girls’ and women’s health.

The article is structured as follows: the next section describes the material and methods. The following section presents the results of the thematic analysis of men’s attitudes and roles. The following section analyses the findings by applying oppositionality, complicit, and engaging men frameworks. The final section draws conclusions and makes recommendations for further research on gender, violence, and health.

Material and methods

The study is based on an inductive, qualitative methodology. We collected data using questionnaires and focus group discussions, with a qualitative thematic analysis and ethnomethodological approach. This approach is particularly useful to document attitudes and opinions regarding values and beliefs that might interfere with the general cultural framework.

Study population and recruitment

A total of 13 men who fulfilled the inclusion criteria participated in the study. We used population data from Sweden Statistics and WHO data on FGM prevalence to identify the group. They were recruited from the largest growing FGM normative migrant community in Sweden and via local minority NGOs. We presented the study for the participants and discussed issues around anonymity, volunteer participation, and publication of results. The importance of confidentiality and non-disclosure between participants, discussion leaders, and researchers were underlined, although it was made explicit that Swedish law requires that anyone with information about specific cases where girls are at risk of FGM must report this to the police (Table 1).

Table 1. Demographic information about the focus group participants.

No. of participants	13
From Somalia or with Somali parent	13
Age of youngest participant (years)	27
Age of oldest participant (years)	63
Age of arrival at youngest age (years)	20
Age of arrival at oldest age (years)	57
Average age of migration (years)	35
No. of participants with children	12
No. of participants with daughters	10
Age of youngest daughter (years)	1
Age of oldest daughter (years)	23
No. of participants with post-compulsory school education	13
No. of participants who had lived in other countries	0

Study design: Focus group discussions and analysis

The focus group discussion was semi-structured with predefined set of questions to help the group leaders navigate and guide the discussion when needed. It was recorded, transcribed, and thematically analyzed.

The focus group discussion was conducted in August 2013. It lasted approximately two and half hours and took place at an ethnic minority organization’s community space. Many topics were discussed, including friendship and social networks; the meaning of FGM at a personal and social level; the role of women and men in FGM; family members involved in a decision to cut a girl; expectations and attitudes toward future partners; and awareness about legal frameworks.

The focus group as a qualitative research method can be particularly useful when working with diverse linguistic and cultural environments (Culley, Hudson, & Rapport, 2007), and hard-to-reach groups (Ahmed, Hussain, & Vournas, 2001). They are considered important in providing a dynamic environment in which participants motivate each other’s views (Kitzinger, 1994). However, the use of focus groups also raises methodological and ethical challenges for researchers working with minority ethnic communities, in particular issues related to language, the role of community facilitators, recruitment, and culturally sensitive topics (Elam & Fenton, 2003; Farquhar, 1999; Kitzinger & Farquhar, 1999). These issues were discussed in the project group, which decided to recruit two male focus group leaders and experienced social workers of different ethnicities. Both of them have in-depth knowledge and experiences of FGM, anti-violence work, and working with men and boys form ethnic minority communities.

The discussions were held in Swedish, which is not the mother tongue of any of the informants. Thus, an interpreter participated to bridge any linguistic barriers between the group leaders and the informants. We transcribed the discussions, and read and reread the transcripts systematically to identify important themes. We used qualitative thematic analysis to identify, analyze, and report on the identified themes. The coding process involved recognizing important themes and encoding them before interpretation (Boyatzis, 1998).

Thematic analysis is a useful approach to focus group discussions. First, thematic analysis brings together fragments of ideas, experiences, and beliefs that are often meaningless when viewed alone (Leininger, 1985). Emerging themes can be pieced together to form a more comprehensive picture of the participants’ shared attitudes and experience (Taylor & Bogdan, 1984). Second, thematic analysis allows for the identification of thematically and chronologically evolving issues, issues that may otherwise not have become visible. Third, thematic analysis of focus group discussions allows for the discovery of knowledge, attitudes, and beliefs the participants did not know they had.

As a whole, the thematic analysis concentrated on identifying ambiguities, tensions, statements that stand out, and content that appeared unfitting or incoherent. This is in line with the main conceptual tools that we use in this article: the relationship between men’s oppositionality and complicity. Thus, in the initial coding process (where we used descriptive codes such as “consequences,” “differences,” “rules,” and “questions”) and in the formulation and reviewing of broader level of themes (Braun & Clarke, 2006), our readings were affected by our epistemological effort to identify strategies which may contribute to the abandonment of FGM. In the phases of defining, naming, and presenting the themes (Braun & Clarke, 2006), we therefore strived to stay anchored in the empirical material as well as providing a theoretically elaborated analysis. Thus, the analysis is both material driven and theoretically driven (Schreier, 2012).

Results

In the thematic analysis, we identified four sets of attitudes toward FGM among the informants: downplay, noninvolvement, adjustment, and curiosity. The results are presented according to their potential to engage men in the eradication of FGM, starting with the most disabling set of attitudes and concluding with the most enabling (Table 2).

Table 2. Sub-themes, themes, and strategies.

Sub-themes (tensions)	Themes (attitudes)	Strategies
Operation: cutting and age Post-operation: physical, psycho-social, and knowledge	Downplay	Disabling
Responsibility, control, power, choice, women’s issue, and breadwinner	Noninvolvement	Neutral
Formal institutions: law and policy Informal institutions: cultural norms, traditions, rituals, religious beliefs, time, and social control	Adjustment
Change, actors of change, men as change agents, transformation, political interventions, methods, and perspectives in health care	Curiosity	Enabling

Downplay

Downplay refers to a set of attitudes in which problems around FGM are diminished, denied, or questioned, including men’s role in the FGM process, the surgery as such, the post-operative health risks (and knowledge about these risks), and the psychosocial effects and the awareness of the girl who undergoes the procedure.

Men’s roles were downplayed by placing responsibility to decide, plan, and perform FGM on mothers or other female relatives:

Participant: If the mum [decides to] cut, then, another woman must fulfill the [inaudible word].

Participant: But it’s she who decides. […]

Participant: Yes, exactly. Right, right. […] It’s the mother who decides […]

Discussion leader: It’s often said that mothers, or even grandmothers, make the decisions […] Do you agree?

[Conversation in Somali between the participants.]

Discussion leader: Most agree?

Interpreter: Yes, precisely. Right, right.

The surgery was downplayed by portraying FGM as a common family practice, which does not have to be a big deal:

Participant: The family have this is ok [Speaking in Somali].

Interpreter translates: It may be the case that one shouldn’t sew the girl. You can’t do that, but you can do it lightly, just a little bit.

Discussion leader: The incision can be both big and small?

Participant: Yes, exactly, a little or a lot. It doesn’t have to be a lot.

The post-operative health risks and effects of the surgery, including the lack of knowledge with regard to this, were also downplayed. Rather than associating FGM with health risks, the opposite was claimed: girls who are not cut might suffer from social exclusion (through mechanism such as bullying, shame, and suspiciousness) and health problems. One of the participants said: “if she is not cut the health [consequences] will be catastrophic”. Some participants agreed, and expressed a genuine concern for the girls’ health. They seemed to believe that it is better to cut just to be on the safe side, which is illustrated in the following excerpt:

Interpreter: Yes, he says that before, when we had the tradition, you thought that if a girl weren’t cut, her health would not be good.

The psychosocial effects and the awareness of the girl who undergoes the procedure were downplayed. Girls under a certain age were described as feeling less pain and as unaware of what is happening around them. It was claimed that it is better to cut them young, although the participants disagreed about at what age exactly: “5,” “7,” or “6 to 10” but certainly not older than 10:

Discussion leader: How late can one cut?

Multiple participants: Ten, ten, ten.

Discussion leader: Ten years.

Discussion leader: Ten, not after ten?

Multiple participants: No, no.

Why “not older than 10”, one of the discussion leaders asked:

Interpreter: It’s too late because from 15 you’re prepared to get married.

Participant: It hurts more.

Participant: If the girl is about ten, she’s capable of understanding everything that is happening around her. That’s why.

Participant: That is the tradition. […]

Discussion leader: We often talk about the psychosocial problems, like bullying.

Participant: It can happen, but it happens very rarely.

To summarize, the participants downplayed men’s role in the FGM process, the surgery as such, the various negative health consequences, and the psychosocial consequences. Through downplay, FGM cannot be acknowledged as a problem of gender inequality, violence, and ill-health. The tendency to downplay the negative health consequences of FGM may therefore hinder improvements of girls’ and women’s health.

Noninvolvement

Noninvolvement refers to the tensions and paradoxes that the men, as fathers and husbands, experienced in the decision-making process related to whether a girl should undergo FGM or not. FGM was initially associated with daughters, mothers, and grandmothers, while men as fathers were depicted as non-involved in the practice. Men’s role as general heads of households was reiterated in contrast to decisions over FGM, where they have no decision-making power:

Participant: I am a dad, and dad has nothing to do with it.

Participant: It is the mothers that take care of the girls, if than shall be cut or not. The dad has not, nothing to do with it.

Here, the gendered division of parental practices and obligations becomes visible: mothers are portrayed as decision-makers, while fathers’ decision-making is limited in relation to FGM. Related to this, one of the participants said that he has never spoken to his father about FGM, and at one occasion in the group discussion, the interpreter summarized a discussion in Somali between the participants:

Interpreter: They said […] that they’re not talking [about FGM] with their wives.

However, as the focus group discussion evolved, the participants said that men do participate in the FGM process. Men were described as financially involved, while women were associated with decision-making and performing the surgery:

Discussion leader: Has the dad, does he say anything about it, will he get the opportunity to say anything about it? […]

Participant: Yes, and then the dad pays.

Participant: But it’s she who decides. The mum, she decides.

As the focus group discussion evolved further, men’s involvement in the practice and its abandonment was highlighted. It has been common among men to not have their daughters cut, it was said:

Discussion leader: Do you think there are dads who don’t want to cut their girls?

Participant: Yes, yes, after the 1990s, the 1980s you can say.

Participant: They [the mum and the dad] discuss it. And then, it can be without.

Participant: That’s how it normally is […] after the 1990s.

Discussion leader: Yes.

Participant: We have, we know many that haven’t done it.

Discussion leader: Yes.

Participant: And the family thinks it’s ok.

To summarize, noninvolvement is operating through discursively exclusions of men from the decision-making related to FGM by constructing FGM as girls’ and women’s issues, although men’s involvement is gradually stipulated during the focus group discussion. Nevertheless, girls’ and women’s health are not mentioned.

Adjustment

Adjustment refers to the significance the men attached to following different forms of rules in Somalia and Sweden: social and cultural norms, tradition, and legislation. The men related to each country in terms of adjustment, which means that one has to subordinate oneself to often-conflicting rules:

Participant: When we were in Somalia, we cut our daughters, or we did genital mutilation. When we came to Sweden, I knew it was illegal […]

Participant: It [FGM] is our tradition.

Participant: But here in Sweden.

Participant: One has to follow rules.

The men insisted in the importance of following institutionalized rules, even when contradictory. The Somali rules demand you marry a cut girl, whereas the Swedish laws forbid cutting girls. The men negotiated this by separating the rules into different types and adjustment strategies: Generally, the participants said that one has to adjust to the rules in the national and cultural context in which one is located:

Participant: One must follow rules. There are rules in Sweden and there are Somali rules. If you are in Somalia […]

Participant: If you are in Somalia, you have to follow the rules. Tradition. And everything that is there, and if you are in Sweden one has to follow the rules.

In relation to marriage, the men discussed rules in a similar vein. They talked about how a son can choose to marry a cut or uncut girl in Sweden, whereas in Somalia, there are social rules embedded in the environment, making it difficult to marry an uncut girl. This discussion was summarized by the interpreter:

Interpreter: There are rules. I have rules that we have to follow. They are social and in the surrounding. In Sweden, the son decides. In the home country, one cannot let the son marry in whatever way he wants. One cannot let the son marry an uncut girl. The surrounding will not allow it.

The men mentioned different forms of social pressure and punishment for those who do not follow the rules: In Somalia, the social control operates via shame, whereas in Sweden, it mainly operates via avoidance of punishment and deportation:

Participant: Yes, when one gets married […] if the girl hasn’t had FGM, the man feels shame […] in the Somali society.

Discussion leader: And in Sweden too?

Multiple participants: No, no, no. No, no. […]

Participant: One has to follow rules or else one has to go back [to the country of origin].

Also in Sweden, social pressure may operate via shame. Among the participants, 10 of 13 are fathers of daughters (see Table 1). During the discussions, the group leaders explicitly posed questions related to social pressure when raising daughters:

Discussion leader: Have you, as fathers, felt a social pressure […] that your daughters should be cut?

[Multiple participants start talking in Somali.] […]

Interpreter: Social pressure, it is, if I come to him, and we are neighbors, he can say: I have seen your daughter, she was in the city center, and perhaps the problem is that she’s not cut.

Discussion leader: Yes.

Interpreter: If affects.

To summarize, adjustment functions as a way of fitting in, of making a conscious attempt to act, believe and to relate to the informal rules (Somali tradition) and, mostly, formal rules (Swedish laws) in the current national context. Just as our analysis of noninvolvement revealed, FGM is not mentioned in terms of girls’ and women’s health.

Curiosity

Curiosity refers to men’s expressed will to learn more about Swedish tradition, policy framework, and health consequences. The men’s desire to learn more repeatedly puts the discussion leaders in a position of having to answer questions and provide knowledge, which they had explicitly stated was not in their roles as discussion leaders.

The first time it happened, the men wanted to learn more about FGM in Swedish traditions. Although the discussion leaders informed the participants that they were not sources of information, the men kept asking questions about FGM in Sweden. First, they asked about FGM and Swedish traditions, second, the policy framework and legal framework, and third, about the rationale behind the Swedish law, including its gendered nature:

Interpreter: He says that cutting, is that a tradition [in Sweden] or not?

Discussion leader: The question is interesting. It’s really interesting, but we can’t discuss it here. […]

Interpreter: […] What will happen if I cut? […]

Discussion leader: In Sweden?

Interpreter: Yes.

Discussion leader: It’s forbidden to cut. […] You can be imprisoned […]

Participant: This law, does it only concern girls? […]

Discussion leader: […] We shall not answer, but I can say that it has been discussed a lot because we know that Muslim boys are cut. In the Jewish tradition, you have cutting.

Discussion leader: Of boys, yes. You raised a question earlier about cutting in Sweden. And I think it has been done earlier in Sweden to catholic boys.

Participant: Catholic boys.

Finally, the participants wanted to engage further in the topic via discussions and seminars. They were interested in participating in similar focus group discussions and made suggestions for how to improve them:

Participant/Interpreter: I will, he says I should ask you to apply for, so that we, this program, seminar. It is better to make it bigger.

Multiple participants: Yes, to discuss. A larger discussion for questions and answers.

Discussion leader: Yes, my take is that this has been very positive and interesting and one could think/assume that it’s important to […] do this in a wider context.

To summarize, the men often interrupted the discussion leaders to ask questions and asserted their interest in more information. As men declare their interest in FGM and the health conditions of girls and women, they also located themselves in time and space. They showed an interest in the past (is cutting a Swedish tradition or not?), the contemporary gendered and legal conditions of FGM in Sweden (what will happen if I cut?), and in the future conditions of men as knowledgeable and responsible actors in the FGM process (make this seminar/program bigger!). In short, FGM was constructed as a men’s issue, which is a presumption for abandoning FGM and for supporting the health of girls and women who have been subjected to the practice or are at risk for it.

Discussion

The findings include four sets of attitudes showing how men explain, rationalize, and justify their roles in the FGM process, and the practice itself, each with its own in-built tensions and ambivalences: downplay, noninvolvement, adjustment, and curiosity. Each set of attitudes can be used to develop strategies to engage men in the eradication of FGM. In the following section, we discuss the sets of attitudes that emerged from the thematic analysis in terms of their capacity to disable, enable, and neutralize the development of strategies to engage men in the eradication of FGM. Disabling strategies may actively hinder the abandonment of FGM, enabling strategies may actively promote the abandonment, and neutral strategies may do both or neither.

Disabling strategies: men’s attitudes toward FGM and their roles in the FGM process may work against the inclusion of men in anti-FGM work. Disabling attitudes do not oppose FGM, but rather (implicitly) support it. They operate through mechanisms of downplaying, where the harmful consequences of FGM are diminished and denied. Many different aspects of FGM were continually downplayed during the focus group discussion: men’s role in the process, their knowledge about it, the surgery as such, and the various risks involved in terms of mental and physical health. Downplay may be understood as the result of lack of knowledge and involvement. It can also be interpreted as a strategy, conscious or not, for maintaining male and paternal privileges. To downplay men’s role means downplaying men’s responsibility. If the risks of FGM are downplayed, or even minimized, there is no need for responsibility for the power and authority of men in a system in which girls are cut; cutting is not a problem. Thus, men’s role in the FGM process could be seen as deeply complicit (Connell, 1995), since the effects of this complicity may (re)produce gender inequalities and gendered violence. As a strategy for engaging men in the eradication of FGM, we would like to state that downplay is deeply problematic in that it neither fosters oppositional attitudes toward FGM nor critical reflection about the role of men in this process (Flood, 2011; Johansson, 2004).

Neutral strategies: men’s attitudes toward FGM and their roles in the FGM process may be neutral. Neutral attitudes refer to men’s more or less culturally prescribe roles in the FGM process, through which their partaking, responsibility, and interests remain un-articulated. They operate through mechanisms of noninvolvement and adjustment. In the analysis of noninvolvement, we showed that men experience and express tensions and paradoxes in relation to their own involvement in the FGM decision-making process. Initially described as a woman’s issue, concerning only mothers, daughters, and grandmothers; men are depicted as non-involved in the practice. However, as the discussion continued, the men talked about how fathers and mothers discuss and together decide to not have their daughters cut. Despite this, the tendency to discursively exclude men from the decision-making related to FGM is clear. FGM is mainly constructed as a women’s issue: women are both victims and perpetrators of FGM. In the analysis of adjustment, we reviled a set of beliefs and behaviors, in which the importance of following informal institutions (Somali tradition and culture) and formal institutions (Swedish laws) related to FGM were underlined. The men described the negotiations between these conflicting rules as difficult but necessary. The risk of appearing as deviant, either as fathers with insufficient authority or as criminals, is a strong force of social control in settings where FGM is normative as well in settings where FGM is non-normative and criminalized.

Neither in noninvolvement nor adjustment, men’s partaking in the FGM process is clearly articulated. On one hand, men’s complicity is underlined (Connell, 1995), for example, by paying for the surgery or by not declaring oppositional standpoints toward FGM when located in FGM normative settings. On the other hand, men’s partial involvement as decision makers in the FGM process and their ability to adjust to FGM non-normative settings may be read as signs of oppositionality (Johansson, 2004).

As a strategy for engaging men in the eradication of FGM, both noninvolvement and adjustment pose challenges. Remaining non-involved hinders critical reflections regarding the multiple perpetrators of FGM and the role of men and their collective relation to violence (Flood, 2011). Adjustment is a bit more promising attitude in that it, to some extent, fosters oppositional standpoints (Johansson, 2004), although this oppositionality is not connected to critical reflection but rather to fear.

Enabling strategies: men’s attitudes toward FGM and their roles in the process may be enabling, meaning they actively contribute to the abandonment of FGM. Enabling attitudes operate via mechanisms of curiosity, that is, men’s expressed will to learn more about the health consequences of FGM, policy, and legal framework, and what is considered Swedish tradition.

The men’s desire to learn more throughout the focus group discussion repeatedly placed the discussion leaders in a position of having to answer questions and provide knowledge, which they had explicitly stated was not in their roles as discussion leaders. Moreover, our analysis of curiosity showed that men indeed may be interested in the FGM process and in gender relations more generally. Through curiosity, men’s responsibilities as complicit and gendered agents in the upholding as well as the abandonment of FGM are underlined. Compared with other identified sets of attitudes—noninvolvement, adjustment, and downplay—men’s complicity and agency is stated more clearly (Connell, 1995). This complicity, shown through curiosity, may enable oppositional standpoints toward the harmful practices of FGM (Johansson, 2004). Therefore, from the perspective of anti-violence work, curiosity is promising (Flood, 2011, Forslind, 2015; Pease, 2008, 2017). As a set of attitudes, from which more enabling strategies may evolve, curiosity challenges notions of men’s violence, and promote men to play a positive role in abandoning FGM. Also, it may counterbalance the tendency to non-critically stay non-involved or adjust to rules regulating FGM, and the tendency to downplay the negative effects of FGM. Finally, it acknowledges the importance of relations between men in theorizing violence as well as in preventing violence (Hearn, 1998, 2012).

Conclusion

In this article, we have focused on minority migrant men’s attitudes and roles in the continuation and/or abandonment of FGM, in a non-normative FGM context. In this sense, our approach, which explicitly has addressed men as gendered beings, differs from previous research often focusing on victims, prevalence, and risks (EIGE (European Institute for Gender Equality), 2014; Gebremariam et al., 2016). We have used focus groups discussions to gather material, which has been thematically analyzed. We have applied a gendered framework for analysis, using concepts from critical studies on men and masculinities and engaging men frameworks. Our analysis show how men explain, rationalize, and justify their roles in the FGM process.

We have identified four sets of attitudes: downplay, noninvolvement, adjustment, and curiosity. These sets of attitudes can be built on to produce disabling, neutral, or enabling strategies: the identification of and variations between these need to be taken into account when developing strategies to engage men in the eradication of FGM.

There is a contemporary window of opportunity for involving minority migrant men in the prevention of FGM and in challenging of a minority migrant gender regime: the men in the study express ambivalence toward the continuation of the practice, a will to reflect on their own role in the continuation of the practice, a desire to adjust to social norms and institutional rules, and the expressed interest to gain knowledge about the legal, health, and medical consequences of FGM. Here, men can be seen as a resource, rather than an obstacle, toward the eradication of FGM.

The attempts to eradicate FGM are more likely to be successful if they employ what we have labeled enabling strategies. These are strategies underpinned by men’s curiosity to reflect on their own role and desire to adjust to social and legal norms, and attitudes through which men take an oppositional stance rather than a complicit stance toward FGM: Such strategies could develop from men’s attitudes that underline the responsibility and accountability of men as a group for the continuation or abandonment of the practice.

To conclude, we suggest that further research on men’s engagement in the process of abandonment of FGM should develop comparative approaches by exploring men’s roles as agents of change in both FGM normative counties and non-normative countries. Through such methodological approaches, one could evaluate whether and how the main conclusion that we have presented in this article—that men’s involvement in enabling strategies is needed in processes of abandoning FGM—is relevant for and generalizable outside FGM non-normative countries such as Sweden.

Additional information

Funding

This work was supported by Örebro University, Örebro, Sweden, under Grant number [1.3.1-00664/2016], and the European Institute for Gender Equality, under Grant number [EIGE/2014/OPER/04].