Factors associated with female genital mutilation among women and girls in Uganda

Abstract

Introduction Female Genital Mutilation (FGM) practice is supported by traditional beliefs, values and attitudes. In some communities for example Kenya and Sierra Leone, Female Genital Mutilation is valued as a rite of passage to womanhood while other communities like Egypt, Somalia and Sudan value it as a means of preserving a girl’s virginity until marriage. In most of these countries, marriage is vital to a woman’s social and economic survival and some African women believe that if their daughters are not circumcised, they would not get husbands since Female Genital Mutilation is among the pre-requisites of getting married. FGM has been implicated in long term infections including chronic genital abscesses, vaginal infections and blood borne infections such as Hepatitis B and HIV. Methods The study used secondary data from the 2016 UDHS. . For this study, the individual record (UGIR) was considered during the analysis. This dataset had one record of each of the interviewed women aged from 15 to 49. The data was analyzed in three forms; Univariate, Bivariate and Multivariate. STATA 16 was the statistical software that was used. Female circumcision was considered as the dependent variable which was made binary with yes and no. The original sample in the dataset was 18,506 women that were interviewed. 10247 women responded to the question under the topic of study and 8,259 women did not. Results This research mainly focused on girls and women in the reproductive age (15-49 years). Research found out that majority of the respondents were aged 20-24 years and they constituted to 20.9%. Majority (99.4%) of the women interviewed had never been circumcised and majority, 31.4% of these women were staying with their partners. Results also show that 50.3% of the respondents had acquired primary education, 32.0% were from the highest quintile and majority of them (74.9%) were currently working. Most of the respondents were from the Eastern region of Uganda, belonged to the Catholic religion, lived in rural areas and listened to a radio at least once a week.