Female genital mutilation (FGM) persists across parts of Africa primarily because of deeply rooted social pressures tied to marriage, community belonging, family honor, and ideas about feminine identity. It is not driven by a single cause but by a web of interconnected social, economic, and perceived religious factors that vary by region. Prevalence ranges from near zero in some countries to 99% in Somalia, where it has remained virtually universal for three decades.
Marriage and Social Acceptance
In many communities where FGM is common, an uncut woman is considered unmarriageable. This is the single most powerful force sustaining the practice. In southern Senegal, for example, both men and older women uphold cutting as a prerequisite for marriage and social inclusion. Men in high-prevalence regions speak openly about refusing to marry uncut women. As one 32-year-old man in Senegal put it: “Marrying an uncut woman is an ugly fact. It is not normal.”
The pressure doesn’t come only from a potential husband. In societies where marriages are arranged between families, a man’s relatives can block a union with an uncut woman. Even if a man personally accepts his bride, his family may refuse to respect her, creating conflict within the household. This means the decision to cut a daughter is often less about individual preference and more about protecting her from social exclusion. Parents who might privately question the practice still go through with it because the cost of not doing so falls on their daughter.
Community respectability reinforces this cycle. Cut women are described as well-mannered and refined. Uncut women are looked at with suspicion. For many families, cutting is understood as preparing a daughter for a successful marriage, and successful marriages strengthen alliances between families and build standing within the community.
Control of Female Sexuality and “Honor”
A core belief underlying FGM in many practicing communities is that it controls a woman’s sexual desire, ensuring she remains chaste before marriage and faithful afterward. By reducing sexual sensation, the practice is thought to protect family honor and increase a husband’s certainty that children are his own. In parts of Sudan and the Horn of Africa, the concept of honor in marriage is explicitly tied to whether a girl has been cut.
This belief turns FGM into a family investment in reputation. In societies that place high value on having many children, a marriage considered honorable brings prestige to both families. Cutting is seen as a way to guarantee that a daughter will enter marriage “properly” and that the resulting union will be socially legitimate. The logic is circular: because the community values it, individual families feel they cannot afford to skip it.
A Marker of Identity and Womanhood
In several ethnic groups, particularly in East Africa, FGM functions as a rite of passage from girlhood to womanhood. The ceremony surrounding the cutting marks a girl’s transition into adult status, granting her recognition and inclusion among other women who have undergone it. Without it, a girl may be seen as permanently childlike, excluded from women’s spaces and conversations, and denied the social identity that comes with being considered a full adult.
This dimension is deeply personal. Women who have been cut often describe the practice as central to who they are. One woman in Senegal described it as important for “the formation of women’s identity and their inclusion and social recognition amongst other cut women.” When identity itself is at stake, abandoning the practice feels like abandoning a piece of yourself, which is one reason older women sometimes defend FGM as fiercely as men do.
The Role of Religion
Many families in practicing communities believe FGM is a religious requirement, but no major religion actually mandates it. The practice predates Islam and is not mentioned in the Quran. Some interpretations of supplementary Islamic texts (hadith) suggest it is encouraged, but contemporary religious leaders disagree sharply on whether Islam requires, permits, or discourages it. In Burkina Faso, about 29% of Muslim women reported believing their religion requires cutting, compared to just 6% of Christian women. The Bible neither supports nor prohibits the practice.
What’s happening in many communities is that “tradition” and “religion” have blurred together over centuries. Women who practice cutting often interpret it as a Muslim custom even though scholars widely agree it did not originate as one. This makes religious framing a powerful reinforcement of the practice, even when it lacks clear doctrinal support. Among indigenous West African religions, which lack founding texts, it’s difficult to determine whether any formal doctrine mandates cutting at all.
Economic Pressures and Bride Wealth
Some researchers have theorized that financial incentives, specifically bride wealth payments from a groom’s family, drive parents to cut their daughters. The reality is more complicated. A detailed study of Arsi Oromo agropastoralists in Ethiopia found that being cut did not predict higher bride wealth. In fact, uncut brides received larger dowries from their own parents, which enhanced their standing in the marriage. Education, not cutting, was associated with higher bride wealth payments.
What cutting did predict was earlier marriage and lower dowry costs for parents. So while cutting doesn’t bring a direct financial windfall, it does reduce the upfront costs parents bear when a daughter marries. For families living on thin margins, this is a real consideration, even if the economic logic favors education in the long run.
Why It Persists Despite Laws and Health Risks
The health consequences of FGM are severe and well documented. A 2025 WHO study found that women who have undergone FGM face more than double the risk of prolonged or obstructed labor and hemorrhage during childbirth, and are significantly more likely to need emergency cesarean sections. Their risk of depression or anxiety is nearly three times higher, and post-traumatic stress disorder is 4.4 times more likely. Babies born to affected mothers face higher rates of fetal distress and lower survival rates. Long-term complications include chronic pain during sex, menstrual problems, and urinary tract infections.
Many African countries have criminalized FGM. Kenya, for instance, passed a dedicated anti-FGM law in 2011, established a national board to campaign against it, and reinforced protections with a 2022 Children Act. A legal challenge to the ban was dismissed by Kenya’s High Court. Despite this, enforcement remains uneven. Cutting often happens in private, in rural areas with limited state presence, and families face more immediate social punishment for not cutting than legal punishment for doing so.
One troubling trend is the medicalization of FGM. In Egypt, 83% of cutting procedures on girls under 17 are now performed by medical professionals, up from 55% in earlier estimates. In some regions of Upper Egypt, the figure exceeds 90%. This shift makes the practice seem safer and more acceptable, undermining efforts to eliminate it even as overall prevalence slowly declines.
Why Decline Is Uneven
Some countries have seen real progress. Ethiopia’s prevalence dropped from 68% to 47%, Eritrea’s fell from near-universal to 69%, and Kenya’s declined from 13% to 9%. Uganda maintains a rate of just 0.1% among adolescent girls. But Somalia has held steady at 99% for three decades, illustrating how resistant the practice can be where every social institution reinforces it simultaneously.
The core challenge is that FGM is sustained by collective expectations. A single family cannot easily opt out when doing so means their daughter faces rejection by potential husbands, exclusion from women’s social networks, and disrespect from in-laws. Change tends to happen not through individual decisions but through coordinated shifts in community norms, where enough families abandon the practice together that the social penalties disappear. This is why some intervention programs focus on community-wide pledges rather than persuading one family at a time.