Sahiyo: Working with Stories to Address Female Genital Cutting (FGC)
Amy Hill
By Mariya Taher
Editor’s Note: In March, 2017, StoryCenter led a digital storytelling workshop with current participants and alumni from the Women’s Policy Institute, a program of the Women’s Foundation of California. Mariya Taher, co-founder of Sahiyo, shared a story about her efforts to end female genital cutting (FGC) in Dawoodi Bohra Muslim communities. We're now developing a collaboration with Sahiyo, to continue engaging women and men affected by FGC in telling their own stories. As part of our Social Justice Blog Series, we share this piece by Mariya, about her work.
The mission of Sahiyo is to empower Dawoodi Bohra Muslims and other Asian communities to abandon female genital cutting (FGC) and create positive change through dialogue, education, and collaboration. Prior to Sahiyo, each of the five cofounders had been talking about FGC for years in our own ways. For instance, I wrote a piece for the Imagining Equality project in 2013, while Sahiyo cofounder Aarefa wrote about FGC as a journalist, and co-founder Priya produced a documentary, “A Pinch of Skin,” (2012) which looks at FGC in India. It was through our separate attempts that we connected and became Sahiyo.
We choose the name ‘Sahiyo’ because it is the Bohra Gujarati word for friend, and it reflects our organization’s mission to engage with the community to find a collective solution towards ending the practice of khatna (the Bohra term for FGC). Our efforts were not new– for decades, even before we had come onto the scene to discuss this topic, there have been other attempts by Dawoodi Bohra women around the world to speak out against female genital cutting and call for an end to this practice. But no collective forum had ever been created to bring together all of these voices, all of these stories.
Early on, we realized the need for a website, a blog where people can share their stories of khatna as a way to both empower and reclaim a piece of themselves that was lost when they underwent it. As we shared these stories, we began to recognize the importance of storytelling and story sharing, in bringing about this dialogue.
Storytelling moves people to do great things. Our campaigns have allowed women and girls to speak up (both anonymously and with their names), when previously many women and girls have been afraid to do so in public. They feared social ostracism and resisted being labeled as victims. Our work has also allowed men to speak up about their views on FGC. Through the collection of stories, we have also been able to advocate for more research on the topic of FGC, because we recognize that even traditional forms of data collection are in themselves a form of storytelling, just in a larger scale.
Stories spark emotions. As human beings, we all have an intuitive, emotional side as well as a deliberate, rational side. Too often in everyday life, people try to connect on a rational level, but this isn’t enough to actually change behavior. People may understand what you want them to do, but if they aren’t emotionally engaged, they just won’t change their minds! Storytelling allows us to appeal to the whole person.
People use stories to make sense of things. Everyone has a story in their head about their life. This story is the result of thousands of interactions and experiences, and it becomes the 'lens' through which people interpret the world around them. A story gives a person a framework to understand other perspectives and can be a prerequisite for change and action. People learn from, and culture is shaped by, the stories of others. Stories give people the space to go beyond what is explicit and discover the implicit meaning of what’s being said, enabling them to expand their horizons and decide to do things differently.
Another reason why Sahiyo uses stories is connected to Social Norms Theory. Sahiyo understands that FGC continues in the Bohra community because khatna is viewed as a social norm. We understand that it is mostly women (mothers, female relatives, wives of the religious clergy) who are influencing and continuing FGC– not because they are being malicious, but because khatna has been given significance. In fact, it is a practice that can be associated with love, because many believe that if a girl does not undergo it, they will not grow up to be a “good Muslim woman.”
This is how social norms work: Think about how you greet someone in your community. You say “hello” – or “salamalakum.” If you don’t do so, if you just brush by someone you know, they might think you’re being disrespectful and view the interaction as rude. The same can be said for FGC: People believe that if a girl doesn’t undergo it, the mother is being disrespectful.
What Sahiyo is trying to do through storytelling is counter this social norm by changing perceptions. Instead of khatna being viewed as norm, we would like people to view it as a social ill. We’re using storytelling to help build a critical mass of voices who speak out against FGC, and who help to show that there is a growing trend within the community towards abandoning the practice.
While khatna continues to be prevalent, more and more Bohra women do not support the practice.
And there is a growing trend to abandon khatna. Sahiyo conducted a survey in 2015 with more than 400 Bohra women globally. We found that 80% of the women had been cut. We also found that most people wanted to end the practice. Of the 80% of women who had been cut, 91% were not okay with performing the practice on their daughters. Of the entire sample size, only 7% were okay with FGC continuing in general, in the community.
What our survey results showed us is that most people want to abandon the practice, but they aren’t talking to each other about it. In social psychology, this is called “pluralistic ignorance.” It’s a situation in which a majority of group members privately reject a norm, but incorrectly assume that most others accept it, and therefore go along with it. This phenomenon can also be described as "no one believes, but everyone thinks that everyone believes.”
We need to make sure that everyone instead thinks no one believes. Sahiyo is engaging in storytelling methods to help demonstrate that there has been a shift in attitude, towards a social norm of NOT thinking that FGC should continue, with future generations. We’ve now expanded our storytelling to include and highlight stories of a growing trend towards abandonment, as well as stories of women – mothers and fathers – who have chosen not to have their daughters undergo FGC. It will always be important to share survivors’ stories, but it is just as vital and important to share positive stories of people wanting to end the practice. This is what Sahiyo intends to do.
Watch Mariya’s digital story and learn more about how digital stories can be used to promote change by tuning into our webinar on “Digital Storytelling and Advocacy,” scheduled for Wed. May 24, 10 am Pacific / 1 pm Eastern.
Read Mariya’s recent piece, “Because I was Harmed,” published on NPR’s Code Switch: Race and Identity Remixed, and make a contribution to support our digital storytelling collaboration with Sahiyo.