The Shape of Water: Women in the Developing World Offer Solutions

Women in Senegal talking about the social pressure they feel to have a genital mutilation done for themselves and their daughters (Screenshot taken from The Shape of Water). 

What was most striking about the documentary and why?

What was most striking to me about this documentary is the discussion of female genital mutilation. More specifically, it was surprising to me to hear the justification for why this practice is still done today in some regions of the world. What I previously heard about this practice is that it is done for religious reasons that are meant to purify the girl who it is being done to. However, the documentary went more in depth in explaining the more current reasons behind this practice, which were striking to me. The women in this video explained that apart from being a religious ceremony, the practice gave a girl respect from the community. A girl who was not cut was not considered a mature adult, and even thought of as not being “clean.” From this documentary, it appears that there is a lot of social pressure for each girl to be cut. This is surprising to me because the way the women who have been cut describe the experience could be enough to convince most people not to have it done, however that is not the case for most girls living in the countries where this is still done. Additionally, a woman described the experience as being an end to your love life, meaning that once you are cut, you no longer feel pleasure from sexual activities. She labeled this as colonization of women done by men because men will not have to worry that their woman will go looking for please from another man. This adds on to the gender inequalities happening in the world today.  

A woman working in a obstetric and pediatric clinic talks about her understanding of the reasoning behind female genital mutilation.