Daughters at Risk of Female Genital Mutilation: Examining the Determinants of Mothers’ Intentions to Allow Their Daughters to Undergo Female Genital Mutilation

Female genital mutilation (FGM) is still a common practice in many countries in Africa and the Middle East. Understanding the determinants of FGM can lead to more active interventions to prevent this harmful practice. The goal of this study is to explore factors associated with FGM behavior among Ir...

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Main Authors:	Pashaei, Tahereh, Ponnet, Koen, Moeeni, Maryam, Khazaee-pool, Maryam, Majlessi, Fereshteh
Format:	Online
Language:	English
Published:	Public Library of Science 2016
Online Access:	https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC4816284/

id	pubmed-4816284
recordtype	oai_dc
spelling	pubmed-48162842016-04-14 Daughters at Risk of Female Genital Mutilation: Examining the Determinants of Mothers’ Intentions to Allow Their Daughters to Undergo Female Genital Mutilation Pashaei, Tahereh Ponnet, Koen Moeeni, Maryam Khazaee-pool, Maryam Majlessi, Fereshteh Research Article Female genital mutilation (FGM) is still a common practice in many countries in Africa and the Middle East. Understanding the determinants of FGM can lead to more active interventions to prevent this harmful practice. The goal of this study is to explore factors associated with FGM behavior among Iranian mothers and their daughters. Based on Ajzen’s theory of planned behavior, we examined the predictive value of attitudes, subjective norms, perceived behavioral control and several socio-demographic variables in relation to mothers’ intentions to mutilate their daughters. A paper-and-pencil survey was conducted among 300 mothers (mean age = 33.20, SD = 9.09) who had at least one daughter and who lived in Ravansar, a county in Kermanshah Province in Iran. Structural equation modeling was used to investigate the relationships among the study variables. Our results indicate that attitude is the strongest predictor of mothers’ intentions to allow their daughters to undergo FGM, followed by subjective norms. Compared to younger mothers, older mothers have more positive attitudes toward FGM, perceive themselves as having more control over their behavior and demonstrate a greater intention to allow their daughter to undergo FGM. Furthermore, we found that less educated mothers and mothers living in rural areas had more positive attitudes toward FGM and feel more social pressure to allow FGM. The model accounts for 93 percent of the variance in the mothers’ intentions to allow their daughters to undergo FGM. Intervention programs that want to decrease FGM might focus primarily on converting mothers’ neutral or positive feelings toward FGM into negative attitudes and on alleviating the perceived social pressure to mutilate one’s daughter. Based on our findings, we provide recommendations about how to curtail mothers’ intentions to allow their daughters to undergo FGM. Public Library of Science 2016-03-31 /pmc/articles/PMC4816284/ /pubmed/27031613 http://dx.doi.org/10.1371/journal.pone.0151630 Text en © 2016 Pashaei et al http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/ This is an open access article distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License (http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/) , which permits unrestricted use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided the original author and source are credited.
repository_type	Open Access Journal
institution_category	Foreign Institution
institution	US National Center for Biotechnology Information
building	NCBI PubMed
collection	Online Access
language	English
format	Online
author	Pashaei, Tahereh Ponnet, Koen Moeeni, Maryam Khazaee-pool, Maryam Majlessi, Fereshteh
spellingShingle	Pashaei, Tahereh Ponnet, Koen Moeeni, Maryam Khazaee-pool, Maryam Majlessi, Fereshteh Daughters at Risk of Female Genital Mutilation: Examining the Determinants of Mothers’ Intentions to Allow Their Daughters to Undergo Female Genital Mutilation
author_facet	Pashaei, Tahereh Ponnet, Koen Moeeni, Maryam Khazaee-pool, Maryam Majlessi, Fereshteh
author_sort	Pashaei, Tahereh
title	Daughters at Risk of Female Genital Mutilation: Examining the Determinants of Mothers’ Intentions to Allow Their Daughters to Undergo Female Genital Mutilation
title_short	Daughters at Risk of Female Genital Mutilation: Examining the Determinants of Mothers’ Intentions to Allow Their Daughters to Undergo Female Genital Mutilation
title_full	Daughters at Risk of Female Genital Mutilation: Examining the Determinants of Mothers’ Intentions to Allow Their Daughters to Undergo Female Genital Mutilation
title_fullStr	Daughters at Risk of Female Genital Mutilation: Examining the Determinants of Mothers’ Intentions to Allow Their Daughters to Undergo Female Genital Mutilation
title_full_unstemmed	Daughters at Risk of Female Genital Mutilation: Examining the Determinants of Mothers’ Intentions to Allow Their Daughters to Undergo Female Genital Mutilation
title_sort	daughters at risk of female genital mutilation: examining the determinants of mothers’ intentions to allow their daughters to undergo female genital mutilation
description	Female genital mutilation (FGM) is still a common practice in many countries in Africa and the Middle East. Understanding the determinants of FGM can lead to more active interventions to prevent this harmful practice. The goal of this study is to explore factors associated with FGM behavior among Iranian mothers and their daughters. Based on Ajzen’s theory of planned behavior, we examined the predictive value of attitudes, subjective norms, perceived behavioral control and several socio-demographic variables in relation to mothers’ intentions to mutilate their daughters. A paper-and-pencil survey was conducted among 300 mothers (mean age = 33.20, SD = 9.09) who had at least one daughter and who lived in Ravansar, a county in Kermanshah Province in Iran. Structural equation modeling was used to investigate the relationships among the study variables. Our results indicate that attitude is the strongest predictor of mothers’ intentions to allow their daughters to undergo FGM, followed by subjective norms. Compared to younger mothers, older mothers have more positive attitudes toward FGM, perceive themselves as having more control over their behavior and demonstrate a greater intention to allow their daughter to undergo FGM. Furthermore, we found that less educated mothers and mothers living in rural areas had more positive attitudes toward FGM and feel more social pressure to allow FGM. The model accounts for 93 percent of the variance in the mothers’ intentions to allow their daughters to undergo FGM. Intervention programs that want to decrease FGM might focus primarily on converting mothers’ neutral or positive feelings toward FGM into negative attitudes and on alleviating the perceived social pressure to mutilate one’s daughter. Based on our findings, we provide recommendations about how to curtail mothers’ intentions to allow their daughters to undergo FGM.
publisher	Public Library of Science
publishDate	2016
url	https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC4816284/
_version_	1613560543888539648

Daughters at Risk of Female Genital Mutilation: Examining the Determinants of Mothers’ Intentions to Allow Their Daughters to Undergo Female Genital Mutilation

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