Paper short abstract:

Efforts to eradicate Female Genital Mutilation/Cutting (FGM/C) and child marriage are mired by narrowly Eurocentric models of gender, empowerment, and feminism. I counter these models with postcolonial critiques and decolonial alternatives, particularly those advanced by African feminists/womanists.

Paper long abstract:

Decolonial literature argues that major organisations working in the fields of global health and gender and development have the implicit ideological function of maintaining power structures rooted in colonial legacies. Their discourses and policies reflect a Eurocentric worldview reinforced by powerful epistemic communities of practice, comprising academics and policy-makers, who act as gatekeepers of knowledge production by excluding other worldviews.

Nowhere is such coloniality of knowledge more evident than in efforts to eradicate Female Genital Mutilation/Cutting (FGM/C) and child marriage. Ostensibly designed to reduce so-called ‘harmful traditional practices’, these programmes’ objectives are far more extensive. The bodies of Black and Brown girls become the battleground for whole-scale social engineering, underpinned by Eurocentric constructions of gender, sexuality, and modernist notions of progress.

I support my argument with data from a postdoc project on two recent trends within FGM/C and child marriage eradication efforts, namely ‘Gender Transformative Approaches (GTAs)’ and the turn among donors and INGOs towards ‘local feminist movements’ as partners. Based on discourse analysis of policy documents, and interviews with practitioners, I show how these approaches promote narrow Eurocentric models of gender, gender equality, empowerment, and feminism. I contrast these models with postcolonial critiques and decolonial alternatives, particularly those advanced by African feminists/womanists, who challenge Eurocentric models of gender and gender equality, and promote feminist strategies aligned with local family and community structures.

I also reflect on my positionality as a white, Northern-based scholar-practitioner, and my use of transnational feminist praxis methodology involving project co-design with local practitioners.