How community dialogues influence norm change around female genital mutilation: a mediation analysis from a high-burden Kenyan setting.
Outcomes: Gender‑Based Violence
View SourceKey Social Norms Take-aways Female genital mutilation is sustained by shared expectations about marriageability, social status, and sanctions for non-compliance rather than solely by individual preferences. Community dialogues may shift these expectations by creating opportunities for collective reflection and visible dissent. The weaker associations for couples-only dialogues suggest that household-level approaches alone may be insufficient when expectations are reinforced by wider community networks; programs should combine family engagement with community-level efforts targeting shared expectations and sanctioning structures.
Objectives To examine whether participation in community dialogues in Narok County, Kenya, was associated with beliefs favorable to female genital mutilation, intentions to cut daughters, perceived marriageability expectations, and opposition to female genital mutilation, and to assess the normative pathways through which dialogues may influence opposition to the practice.
Methods The study used a 2024 cross-sectional, community-based survey of 2,658 respondents aged 15–60 years, including 1,272 women and 1,386 men. Social norms-related measures included a five-item composite measure of beliefs favorable to cutting and single-item measures of intention to cut a daughter, the perceived expectation that men would not marry uncut women, and opposition to female genital mutilation. Analyses used generalized estimating equations, predicted probabilities, and generalized structural equation models to examine mediation through beliefs, intentions, and marriageability expectations.
Intervention Details The Girl Generation: Support to the Africa-Led Movement to End Female Genital Mutilation program included monthly intergenerational community dialogues bringing together girls, women, boys, men, elders, and opinion leaders. Trained community champions facilitated discussions designed to question and renegotiate female genital mutilation-related gender and marriageability expectations. Complementary couples’ dialogues, generally involving about 10 couples every two weeks, addressed female genital mutilation, decisions about daughters, and marriageability within households.
Results Community-dialogue participation was associated with lower odds of beliefs favorable to cutting (adjusted odds ratio 0.61), intention to cut a daughter (0.49), and perceiving uncut girls as unmarriageable (0.53), and higher odds of opposing female genital mutilation (2.39). Couples-only dialogues showed smaller and less consistent associations. Mediation analysis indicated that 88% of the association between community dialogues and opposition operated through changes in beliefs, intentions, and marriageability expectations, with intentions providing the strongest pathway.
Conclusions Community dialogues were strongly associated with changes in the social expectations and intentions underpinning female genital mutilation, supporting dialogue-centered, community-level strategies in high-prevalence settings. Beliefs about cutting, behavioral intentions, and marriageability expectations may serve as important intermediate indicators for tracking normative change before behavioral declines become measurable.
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