The second webinar on the theme of democracy, populism, the coronavirus pandemic & enduring patriarchal traditions, part of the Patriarchal Inscriptions: Female bodies contested, invaded defended & owned webinar series.

The persistence of practices of ‘female circumcision’ and their encoded cultural undergirding raise critical issues of systemic injustice in the body politics cross-culturally.

This event will explore the following topics:

• What weaknesses have come to obstruct efforts to end female genital mutilation?
• How have governments’ mis/management of the pandemic exacerbated existing fault-lines of gender precarity?
• How has progress in challenging and abolishing FGM practices been vitiated by widely applied government policies and measures that embrace lockdowns of large parts of public government services, curfews, household quarantine and mandatory individual isolation?
• How has opposition among members of minority communities in western societies – when it comes to governments’ FGM policies, deeply felt subtexts of prejudice and popular scapegoating – been appropriated and instrumentalized to serve populist exclusionary aims that demonize entire marginalized cultures?
• What does the failure of enforcement of anti-FGM legislation uncover about political will, identity politics, the hierarchy of suffering and about inter-/national feminist ambivalences?

Programme

‘This is not my fatherland’: Stories from the lives of Nigerian exiles Annagrazia Faraca, Università per Stranieri di Perugia, Dept of Human & Social Sciences

FGM in one of the world’s richest countries: Singapore. John Chua, writer, director, producer of Cut. Exposing FGM Worldwide with co-producer Mark Grasso

What makes an intervention effective? Giving the best & most sustainable outcomes to girls at risk of FGM Cath Holland, midwife & founder of Beyond FGM

Breaking a spiral of girls’ disempowerment among the Maasai in Kajiado County Lester Linti, Enkorika Secondary School, Kadjiado, Kenya & Project Coordinator, CAFGEM CBO, Kajiado County

Following presentations by the speakers, there will be a moderated Q&A.

Registered attendees will be sent the access link to participate in the webinar on their web browser or via the Microsoft Teams app the day prior.

To register your place, please visit Eventbrite.