International Sociology 2002 Boyle 5 33

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Local Conformity to International Norms : The Case of Female Genital

Cutting
Elizabeth Heger Boyle, Barbara J. McMorris and Mayra Gómez
International Sociology 2002 17: 5
DOI: 10.1177/0268580902017001001
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Local Conformity to International

Norms
The Case of Female Genital Cutting
Elizabeth Heger Boyle

University of Minnesota
Barbara J. McMorris
University of Washington
Mayra Gómez
Centre on Housing Rights and Evictions
abstract: Using the case of female genital cutting (FGC), the

article addresses the question of when local attitudes and
practices conform to international norms. One theoretical
perspective links attitudes in developing countries to control
over the physical environment, arguing that greater control
over nature is associated with the rejection of traditional
authority and the acceptance of modern science. A compet-
ing perspective emphasizes the importance of western
scripts as a source of individual identity. The authors use
hierarchical models to analyze Demographic and Health
Survey data on attitudes toward, and the practice of, female
genital cutting in five African countries with anti-FGC
policies. They find that institutions that carry ‘modern’
scripts – education, college, mass media and female employ-
ment – all reduce the probability that women will favor the
continuation of FGC or ‘circumcision’ of their daughters. The
effects of factors associated with control over nature were
more mixed. The study also finds that Christian women are
more likely to express negative attitudes toward FGC.
keywords: Africa ✦ female genital cutting ✦ international

norms ✦ modernization
International Sociology ✦ March 2002 ✦ Vol 17(1): 5–33

SAGE (London, Thousand Oaks, CA and New Delhi)
[0268-5809(200203)17:1;5–33;021587]
01Boyle (bc/d) 12/2/02 2:25 pm Page 6
International Sociology Vol. 17 No. 1
Global institutions increasingly set the standards for the appropriate

policies of nation-states (Meyer et al., 1997; Frank and McEneaney, 1999;
Frank et al., 2000). As a result, national laws are often quite similar, even
across very different countries (Ramirez et al., 1997; Boyle and Preves,
2000). While much research in the neoinstitutional tradition demonstrates
this link between international norms and national policies, there is vir-
tually no research considering the subsequent diffusion of norms from
the international/national levels to individual attitudes and behavior.
Because the effectiveness of national policies ultimately depends on
individual behavior change, until this shortcoming is addressed, the
impact of global neoinstitutional theory is necessarily limited. For
example, stringent environmental laws are useless in a country where
local organizations and individuals fail to bring their behavior into con-
formity with the laws. Likewise, giving women the right to vote is point-
less in a country where local circumstances do not allow women to move
about freely and independently. This is theoretically important as well.
As Arjomand (2000) has noted, differences in local situations must be com-
pared in order to create universal concepts and categories. This study
comes to the aid of neoinstitutional theory by incorporating individuals’
attitudes and behavior into the consideration of international norms.
National Modernization vs International Scripts

We use neoinstitutionalism and modernization theory to provide points
of contrast in explaining individual conformity to international norms.
Although the two theories overlap in important ways, they make criti-
cally different assumptions about why traditional social practices erode.
By highlighting these differences, we gain leverage in more precisely
explaining how large-scale differences in attitudes and behavior emerge
in the international system. Neoinstitutionalists theorize that institutional
logics provide scripts for constructing individuals’ identities and under-
standings about the world (see Meyer and Jepperson, 2000: 107; Boyle and
Meyer, 1998). These scripts provide the basis for the mental associations
that individuals assign to particular actions (see March and Olsen, 1989;
Sutherland, 1936) or the ‘tools’ that they find in their ‘cultural toolkit’
(Swidler, 1986). Neoinstitutionalists expect individuals to use the logics
of the international system if they are immersed in that system.
Rationalized institutional arrangements, such as models of actors and
definitions of desirable goals and purposes, are built into the organiz-
ational structures and political systems of the modern world. For example,
schools pass on the ‘facts’ that each child is an individual and that
all individuals are equal. They produce actors who assume that control
over their bodies is an inherent personal right and obligation. Under a
01Boyle (bc/d) 12/2/02 2:25 pm Page 7
Boyle et al. Local Conformity to International Norms
neoinstitutionalist framework, the key empirical factor that links macro-

and micro-levels is exposure to the scripts embedded in the international
system. Exposure occurs through these institutional arrangements. Thus,
factors external to any particular nation-state influence the overall course
of both nation-states and the people within them – because of their link
to the international system, organizations such as schools pass on a similar
sense of individual right regardless of the particular country in which
they are located.
Modernization theories, on the other hand, seek to explain why indi-
viduals’ personalities change as a result of exposure to ‘modern’ struc-
tures (see Inkeles and Smith, 1974; Inglehart and Baker, 2000). National
development and the accompanying structural changes affect individual
values by altering the relationship of individuals to their environments,
especially their physical environments. For example, Bell (1973, 1976)
explains that during the process of industrialization, individuals move
from a state of war against nature to a state of war against ‘fabricated
nature’. As a part of this process, individuals begin to emphasize material-
ism over religion, and, ultimately, self-expression over materialism.
National industrialization inevitably leads to individual modernization,
but the process is largely independent of the nation’s relationship to other
countries or the global system.
There is a great deal of similarity in the predictions of neoinstitution-
alism and modernization theories because many of the structures that
accompany modernization also carry the scripts of the international
system. Nevertheless, the theories differ in two important respects. Neo-
institutionalism emphasizes scripts while modernization theory empha-
sizes individuals’ relationships to nature. Further, modernization theorists
see the erosion of traditional social practices as an individual-level
phenomenon driven by national-level development; neoinstitutionalists
place less emphasis on individual personality and see change resulting
more from an increasingly elaborated international system. We purposely
construct the theoretical contrasts in stark terms because this allows the
clearest conceptualization of the differing ways in which attitudes and
behaviors develop.1 The current analysis extends studies of global culture
to incorporate individual attitude and behavior change. Since to date
modernization theories have focused primarily on attitudes as indicators
of personality, the current analysis also extends modernization theory to
incorporate behavioral patterns. Most importantly, this analysis arbitrates
a test of the major difference between neoinstitutionalism and moderniz-
ation theories.
01Boyle (bc/d) 12/2/02 2:25 pm Page 8
Female Genital Cutting

We begin our line of inquiry by focusing on an issue that has been tar-
geted for change by the international community, female genital cutting
or ‘FGC’.2 Human rights ideals provide a particularly successful foun-
dation for new national policies under diffusion models (Meyer et al.,
1987). Most recently, feminist discourse has expanded the idea of human
rights, insisting that states have a positive requirement to protect indi-
viduals against harmful actions that occur in the ‘private’ realm
(Charlesworth, 1995; Stevens, 1996). In this regard, human rights activists
have attempted to transcend cultural boundaries by grouping a number
of private actions and practices under the broad title ‘violence against
women’.3 At the international level, activists who promote this idea have
been successful in increasing attention to issues such as FGC, wife-
beating, marital rape, child abuse and sexual harassment (Etienne, 1995;
see generally Peters and Wolper, 1995; Cook, 1994; Dallmeyer, 1993). Thus,
FGC represents an important research setting to explore changes in
private behavior labeled a violation of human rights by the international
community.
FGC is, or at least has been, normative in the regions where it occurs.
By ‘normative’ we mean that the practice is taken for granted. For
example, Sandra Lane and Robert Rubinstein (1996: 35) recently reported:
In the rural Egyptian hamlet where we have conducted fieldwork some women
were not familiar with groups that did not circumcise their girls. When they
learned that the female researcher was not circumcised their response was
disgust mixed with joking laughter. They wondered how she could have thus
gotten married and questioned how her mother could have neglected such an
important part of her preparation for womanhood. It was clearly unthinkable
to them for a woman not to be circumcised.
Consequently, international activists mobilized to eradicate FGC are

asking individuals to deviate from traditional norms.4
A detailed description of FGC and its history are available elsewhere5
– we only briefly summarize that information here. The precise origins of
FGC are unclear, but the practice dates back to antiquity (Lightfoot-Klein,
1989). FGC is deeply embedded in the culture of a number of central
African nations. It is practiced widely in 24 countries, and by a majority
of families in 14 other countries (US State Department, 1998; Smith, 1995).
The World Health Organization (1997) estimates that worldwide over 130
million women and girls have undergone some form of genital cutting.
FGC is typically delineated into three categories that vary by type of
procedure (Toubia and Izett, 1998). ‘Sunna’ is the least invasive procedure
and is most comparable to male circumcision. It involves the removal of
01Boyle (bc/d) 12/2/02 2:25 pm Page 9
the prepuce, or hood, of the clitoris. ‘Genital excision’ or ‘clitoridectomy’

is the removal of the entire clitoris and the labia minora, leaving the labia
majora intact. ‘Infibulation’, the most extreme form of FGC, is the
excision of the clitoris, labia minora and labia majora, followed by the
sewing together of the raw edges of the vulva so that only a small hole
remains through which urine and menstrual fluid may pass. Common
complications from FGC include shock, bleeding, infection and – for
infibulation – delayed problems such as menstrual pain, urinary tract
infections, painful intercourse and difficulties in childbirth. On rare occa-
sions, complications arising from FGC can even result in death. Recently,
international attention has focused more on eradicating the practice alto-
gether rather than promoting the less invasive ‘sunna’ procedure (see, for
example, Coleman, 1998; Joint Statement, 1995).
There are a large number of explanations given for FGC, but the most
encompassing is that the practice continues because it is a tradition (see,
for example, Bibbings, 1995: 155). In locations where women are circum-
cised, the practice is often viewed as a corollary to male circumcision (see
Assaad, 1980; Leonard, 1996: 257). (From a medical perspective, clitori-
dectomy and infibulation would be more comparable to male castration.)
FGC is designed to insure the virginity of women upon marriage and is
often a requisite to finding a mate for young women (see Mackie, 1996).
Mothers take responsibility for having their daughters circumcised.
Mobilization against FGC emerged in the first half of the 20th century,
but was largely unsuccessful (Keck and Sikkink, 1998). Attention to the
issue waned during the political shifts accompanying national indepen-
dence in the late 1950s and early 1960s (Boyle et al., 2000). Eventually, the
issue re-emerged in discussions among international activists. United
Nations criticism of FGC began in 1964, and a wave of interest among
western feminists in the 1970s eventually encouraged the international
community to make the eradication of FGC a priority (James, 1998;
Brennan, 1989). The USA passed legislation in 1996 prohibiting the prac-
tice and making US support for loans from international financial insti-
tutions dependent on foreign governments carrying out educational
campaigns against it. This action and previous pressure from the inter-
national community compelled even reluctant governments in countries
where FGC occurs to take action to eradicate the practice. Since 1990,
every country with an acting government where FGC is common has
passed a law and/or adopted an explicit policy against the practice (Boyle
and Preves, 2000).
The sweeping dominance of the anti-FGC norm is thus evident at both
the international and the national levels. Our questions are whether, and
under what circumstances, the diffusion of state policies is actually effec-
tive in changing behavior within countries. There is evidence of some
01Boyle (bc/d) 12/2/02 2:25 pm Page 10
change at the individual level – Table 1 shows modest erosion in the

intergenerational continuity of the practice in a sample of women from
Egypt, Kenya, Mali, Niger and the Sudan. Among circumcised women
in these countries, 85 percent have or intend to circumcise their daugh-
ters (79 per cent plus 6 percent). While the percentage is very high, it is
considerably less than a perfect intergenerational reproduction of the
practice. Our research advances and tests a theory to explain behavioral
and attitudinal conformity to a practice targeted by the international
community.
National Backgrounds and Regional

Development
We study FGC in five African countries where recent Demographic and
Health Surveys asked women about their attitudes and conduct with
respect to the practice: Egypt, Kenya, Mali, Niger and Sudan.6 Variations
in conditions across the five countries provide a useful test for determin-
ing whether individual level factors operate similarly across countries and
regions. Neoinstitutionalists have determined that historical processes
create somewhat unique policy development trajectories (Dobbin, 1996;
Frank et al., 1995). Likewise, modernization theorists have noted that
distinctive ‘cultural zones’ continue to exist independently of level of
economic development (Inglehart and Baker, 2000). Consequently, both
categories of theories would predict national variation in implementation
based on historical factors. Modernization theorists would also assign
importance to levels of regional and national development.
Table 1 Cross-Tabulations of Behavior by Attitudes for Uncircumcised Women and

Circumcised Women
Daughter Daughter not
circumcised circumcised Totals
FGC should 79.0% 5.7% 84.7%
Circumcised continue (16,430) (1182) (17,612)
women FGC should 6.0% 9.4% 15.3%
(N = 20,800) not continue (1241) (1947) (3188)
FGC should 4.5% 9.0% 13.5%
Uncircumcised continue (188) (374) (562)
women FGC should 1.2% 85.4% 86.5%
(N = 4176) not continue (49) (3565) (3614)
71.7% 28.3%
Totals (17,908) (7068)
10
01Boyle (bc/d) 12/2/02 2:25 pm Page 11
In the modern historical context, all of the countries have experienced

European colonization or occupation. Both Mali and Niger were French
colonies and both claimed independence in 1960. Kenya was a British
colony, but became fully independent in 1963. Britain occupied Egypt
until 1953 (following a history of occupation by Turks and then an Anglo-
French coalition). Egypt and Britain jointly administered Sudan until 1953
under a ‘condominium agreement’ signed in 1899. Recent histories thus
hold a common theme of occupation and colonization although the
colonial powers involved were different.
With respect to current political and economic conditions, Egypt is the
most developed country, followed by Kenya (see Table 2). The life
expectancy for a person in Egypt is six years greater than the next highest
country, its fertility rate is the lowest of the five countries and its GDP
per capita is nearly double that of the next highest country. (For this
reason, we use Egypt as the reference category in our analysis.) Sudan is
the most unstable of the five countries. Twenty years of civil war between
the north and the south have claimed 1.5 million lives, over 4 percent of
Table 2 Background Statistics for Egypt, Kenya, Mali, Niger and the Sudan
Egypt Kenya Mali Niger Sudan
Population,
in millions 67.0 28.8 10.4 10.0 34.5
Land (km2) 1.00 million 583,000 1.24 million 1.27 million 2.51 million
Infant mortality
(deaths per
1000 live births) 67 59 119 113 71
Life expectancy
in years 62 47 48 42 56
Fertility rate
(children born
per woman) 3.3 3.9 7.0 7.2 5.6
GDP per capita
(purchasing
power parity) US$2850 US$1550 US$790 US$970 US$930
Male literacy
rate 63.6 86.3 39.4 20.9 57.7
Female
literacy rate 38.8 70.0 23.1 6.6 34.6
Source: Central Intelligence Agency (1999).
11
01Boyle (bc/d) 12/2/02 2:25 pm Page 12
the country’s total population. In Niger, a group of army officers over-

threw the elected government in 1996 and continue to hold power. In con-
trast, Kenya held its first multi-party elections since independence in 1992;
the most recent elections were held in 1997. The governments in both
Egypt and Mali have been relatively stable although in both countries
religious tensions have led to numerous deaths in recent years. Econ-
omically, Mali, Niger and the Sudan are the poorest countries. All of the
countries tend to rely on international donors to fund gender equality and
children’s welfare programs because the governments lack the resources
to fund social programs internally.
With respect to women’s rights, all of the countries except the Sudan
have laws or constitutional provisions that call for gender equality.
(Kenya only recently amended its constitution to prohibit gender dis-
crimination.) The Sudanese government maintains the ‘Public Order
Police’ commissioned to enforce proper social behavior, including restric-
tions on ‘immodest dress’ by women. What ‘immodest dress’ means pre-
cisely appears to vary from place to place, but it minimally requires that
women wear head coverings in public. Gender segregation is also
common in social settings in Sudan. In the other four countries, general
laws mandating gender equality are largely decoupled from practice and
are often inconsistent with more specific laws, such as those regarding
marriage, inheritance and travel. In the countries where Islam is the
dominant religion, actual practice tends to coincide with Islamic beliefs
regarding women’s proper role in society. For example, in Egypt and
Kenya, women must have the permission of their fathers or husbands to
obtain a passport. In all five countries, it appears that girls are more likely
than boys to drop out of school because of the pressure to begin families,
and there is strong social pressure against women working in the paid
economy.
Despite western interpretations of the practice, not circumcising one’s
daughters is considered deviant in many regions of these countries. FGC
is practiced on nearly all girls in Egypt, Mali, and Sudan. The rate is much
lower in Kenya (about 37 percent) and Niger (about 14 percent) (Carr,
1997). In Kenya, FGC was historically linked to nationalist movements –
it was a plank in the anti-colonial platform of the 1930s and the founding
father of the country (Kenyatta, 1962) explicitly linked FGC to nationalist
pride. In contrast, in Niger, FGC has always been a minority tradition.
Infibulation, the most extreme form of FGC, is the most common form in
Sudan; excision of the clitoris is more common in Egypt, Kenya, Mali and
Niger. While the governments in the five countries formally oppose FGC,
the degree of specific action against the practice has varied.
Sudan legally banned FGC in 1974, but the practice continues to be
widespread there. In fact, there are reports that women displaced from
12
01Boyle (bc/d) 12/2/02 2:25 pm Page 13
the south as a result of the war are having their daughters circumcised
even if they themselves were not circumcised. (Note in Table 1 that 4.5
percent of uncircumcised women in our sample had circumcised their
daughters.) Mali and Niger adopted anti-FGC policies only recently.
Neither government has proposed legislation prohibiting FGC, but both
support educational efforts to eliminate the practice and provide media
access to proponents of its elimination. In 1997, the Ministry for the Pro-
motion of Women in Mali created a National Committee Against Violence
Towards Women that links all the international organizations active in
preventing FGC in Mali. Likewise, the Niger government has been co-
operating with UNICEF to eradicate the practice in that country. Inter-
national organization involvement in eradication efforts is extensive in all
of the countries.
In Egypt, the government reissued and expanded a health ministry
decree to ban the performance of any type of FGC in public health clinics
in 1994. Yet, the reissued decree came under political and legal attack by
Islamic fundamentalists. Their legal claim was that the decree went
against Islam, the state religion. Ultimately, national courts upheld the
decree on the ground that Islam does not require FGC. Subsequently, a
discussion of FGC and its dangers was added to the curriculum of the
Egyptian school system. Television programs condemn the practice there.
Kenya’s current president has issued two presidential decrees banning
FGC. In 2001, the Kenya legislature adopted a law banning FGC. Explicit
anti-FGC policies are in place in all of the countries.
Hypotheses
As our brief description of the practice suggests, the issue of FGC rep-
resents cultural conflict in the modern world. The issue generates strong
emotions from both supporters and critics. Its eradication is not incon-
ceivable, but neither is it assured. These factors make FGC a uniquely
important issue for understanding whether and how individuals forgo
certain social practices that are targeted by the international community.
From this starting point, we move to our specific empirical question: the
social psychological basis for conformity to the international anti-FGC
norm.
Modernization theory posits that individuals who have gained inde-
pendence from the vagaries of nature see themselves as more efficacious
than those who are highly susceptible to nature’s whims. They act upon
the world rather than the other way around and reject a fatalistic approach
to life (Inkeles, 1996: 572; see also Bell, 1976). One consequence of less-
ening direct reliance on the physical environment and developing a sense
of individual instrumentality is a greater belief in the efficacy of science
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01Boyle (bc/d) 12/2/02 2:25 pm Page 14
and medicine. Gaining the capability to control one’s physical environ-

ment may provide an affinity for thinking in general terms of cause and
effect. The inference for the case of FGC is that individuals with control
over their natural surroundings will be more likely to make a connection
between FGC and negative health consequences, and therefore less likely
to support the practice. Modernization theorists also suggest that inde-
pendence from nature leads to a willingness to challenge traditional auth-
ority figures – perhaps including those who advocate FGC.
Two indicators of relative independence from the physical environment
are electricity and urban dwelling. Electricity represents a type of control
over nature because it provides heating and cooling and a greater ability
to preserve food. With electric lighting, individuals are less dependent on
daylight. By suggesting non-agricultural employment, urban dwelling
also implies independence from nature. Consistent with the ideas of
modernization theory, we hypothesize:
Hypothesis 1: All else being equal, women in households with electric-
ity will be less likely to favor the continuation of FGC or to circumcise
their daughters than women in households without electricity.
Hypothesis 2: All else being equal, women in urban areas will be less
likely to favor the continuation of FGC or to circumcise their daughters
than women in rural areas.
Because modernization theorists stress the role of development in
changing individual personalities, we also created a regional develop-
ment factor based on the percentage of men in non-agricultural occu-
pations,7 female literacy percentages and the percentage of households
with electricity in the region.8 We expect this factor to operate in the same
manner as the individual-level modernization factors:
Hypothesis 3: All else being equal, the greater the level of development
in a region, the lower the probability that women in that region will favor
the continuation of FGC or circumcise their daughters.
Finally, because Egypt is the most developed of the five countries con-
sidered here, modernization theory would expect Egypt to be the quick-
est to abandon the practice of FGC. We therefore also hypothesize:
Hypothesis 4: All else being equal, in Egypt women will have a lower
probability of favoring the continuation of FGC or circumcising their
daughters than women in the other four countries.
In sum, we include measures of modernization for three different levels
of analysis – individual, regional and national. If the rejection of FGC
results from a reordering of individuals’ relationships with their environ-
ments, then the effects of these factors will be notable.
Neoinstitutionalists suggest a different process: individuals will
conform to international norms in attitudes and behavior once they
become familiar with the institutional logics of the international system.
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01Boyle (bc/d) 12/2/02 2:25 pm Page 15
Privileging exposure to the international system in this way leads to

hypothesized effects from those aspects of modernity that carry the scripts
of the international community. Modernization theorists would not dis-
agree that modern institutions carry scripts that can lead to the erosion
of traditional social practices, although for them the scripts are important
for reorienting individuals’ connections ‘to nature, to time, to fate, to
women, and to God’ (Inkeles, 1996: 573). Once again, modernization
theorists are interested in how western scripts change the way individuals
see themselves vis-a-vis their environment. Although our data do not
allow us to determine precisely why exposure to institutions that carry
the scripts of the international system is correlated with conformity to
international norms, they do allow us to test the importance of ‘script-
carriers’ generally.
Both education and the media are western constructs and both tend to
carry western ideas throughout the developing world (Ramirez and Boli,
1987; Herman and McChesney, 1997: 8). Thus, higher levels of education
and media exposure are likely associated with less favorable attitudes
toward targeted traditional practices:
Hypothesis 5: All else being equal, education (measured in terms of years
of education and whether or not a woman attended college) will decrease
the likelihood that a woman will favor the continuation FGC or have her
daughter circumcised.
Hypothesis 6: All else being equal, access to public media (measured
through radio ownership) will decrease the likelihood that a woman will
favor the continuation of FGC or have her daughter circumcised.
Employment is also likely to be important. Women who work for pay
are more likely to be exposed to the scripts of the international system.
In addition, in societies where FGC is practiced, women typically acquire
value through marriage. A failure to be circumcised can drastically reduce
a woman’s chances of marriage. However, women who earn money
outside the home may have other avenues to future security. Thus,
increasing women’s economic independence could lead to a decrease in
private abuses (see also Toubia and Izett, 1998). We therefore predict:
Hypothesis 7: All else being equal, women who work for pay will be less
likely to favor the continuation of FGC or to circumcise their daughters
than women who do not work for pay.
Religion plays an important role in the construction of identity in
Islamic Africa. Whether Islam requires FGC is a contested question
(Boddy, 1991). The practice predates Islam, does not occur in most Middle
Eastern countries and is not explicitly required by the Koran. Neverthe-
less, some powerful Islamic leaders advocate the practice, and in Africa
its occurrence has coincided with Islam (see, for example, Lancaster, 1995).
Furthermore, field research has suggested that proximity to high status
15
01Boyle (bc/d) 12/2/02 2:25 pm Page 16
Islamic groups increases the likelihood of circumcision. For example, Ellen

Gruenbaum (1991) studied two communities in Somalia in 1989, the
Kenana, who practiced infibulation, and the Zabarma, who practiced a
much milder form of FGC. The two groups worked together in a com-
munity that had been formed by the government. The Kenana were con-
sidered by all to be the higher status group because of their closer
connection to the Islamic world. After interacting in close proximity for
a decade, the Zabarma began to adopt many of the practices of their
higher status neighbors, including the more extreme form of FGC. This
example illustrates how FGC can sometimes be viewed as a positive
attribute of Islamic identity and culture.
In addition, many of the assumptions embedded in the international
system are linked historically to Christianity (Boyle and Meyer, 1998).
Opposition to FGC began with Christian missionaries in Africa (Keck and
Sikkink, 1998). Christianity is more closely linked than many other
religions to individualism (emphasizing individual responsibility and
salvation) and the ideology of individual rights. It is therefore probable
that a connection exists between Christianity and opposition to FGC:
Hypothesis 8: All else being equal, Christian women will be less likely
than Muslim women to favor the continuation of FGC or to circumcise
their daughters.
Because it is central to identity, religion is also likely to be a key deter-
minant of the salience of international norms for women. Religion provides
a transcendent explanation for action that bolsters individuals’ acceptance
of ‘traditional’ norms over the norms promoted by the international com-
munity, and Islam has served as a base of resistance to a number of global
norms. The global system itself arises from Christian countries – Christian
women’s ideology is thus more consistent with the ideals of the inter-
national system. Since Christian women are more likely to identify with the
western ideas carried by the international system, we also hypothesize:
Hypothesis 9: All else being equal, the influence of indicators most
closely linked to exposure to western discourse – college and public media
– will be greater for Christians than for Muslims.
In sum, we are exploring the relative importance of individuals’
physical surroundings and exposure to ‘script-carrying’ institutions for
conformity to the international anti-FGC norm. Moving beyond the exist-
ing theories, we suggest that religion, as a signifier of the salience of inter-
national norms, will mediate the effect of other variables.
Data and Method

The lack of international data is undoubtedly one reason for the dearth
of attention to policy implementation by neoinstitutionalists who study
16
01Boyle (bc/d) 12/2/02 2:25 pm Page 17
the international system. Fortunately, recent Demographic and Health

Survey9 modules on FGC represent a unique opportunity to evaluate
changes in an individual behavior that has been targeted for change by
the international community. The nationally representative surveys are
administered in local languages and use locally recognized terminology.
The surveys in Egypt, Kenya, Mali, Niger and Sudan10 asked women a
series of questions about FGC, including (1) whether they favored the
continuation of the practice and (2) whether they had or intended to cir-
cumcise their daughters. Despite the sensitivity of the questions, there is
no evidence that women refused to answer or that the results were biased
toward particular responses. Our sample includes 24,976 women from the
five countries who answered these two questions and who had at least
one daughter 18 years old or younger.11 Because mothers are primarily
responsible for having their daughters circumcised (see, for example,
Dorkenoo, 1994: 49), their attitudes and behavior are critically important
in creating overall changes in rates of FGC.
We use hierarchical modeling techniques to determine how women’s
personal situations as well as their regional and national environments
influence their attitudes toward FGC and decisions to circumcise their
daughters. In contrast to ordinary least squares or logistic regression
models, multilevel methods account for the hierarchical nature of data
measuring individual characteristics of women who are clustered within
regions and nations. There are a total of 33 regions within the five coun-
tries we studied.12
Hierarchical generalized linear models13 (HGLM) for dichotomous-
outcome dependent variables estimate the impact of both individual- and
regional-level variables on individual attitudes and behaviors. These hier-
archical models explain the data by employing submodels and nested error
terms that permit a determination of effects and sources of variation at each
of the different levels of analysis. The advantage of using HGLM is that
the models correct for correlated error at the different levels of analysis,
allowing one to simultaneously model both individual-level and regional-
level relationships without forcing a choice of one against the other.
We conduct two separate analyses – one predicting attitudes toward con-
tinuation of FGC; the other predicting the actual behavior of circumcising
one’s daughter. This dual analysis bolsters the reliability of our findings
and also allows for exploration of differences in how attitudes and behav-
iors are influenced. Specifically, the dependent variable representing atti-
tudes is a dichotomous measure of women’s attitudes toward the
continuation of FGC. Favoring the continuation of the practice is coded as
‘1’; opposition as ‘0’.14 Similarly, the behavior measure consists of a
dichotomy of whether women had, or planned to, circumcise their daugh-
ters.15 If women had or intended to have their daughters circumcised, their
17
01Boyle (bc/d) 12/2/02 2:25 pm Page 18
response is coded as ‘1’; if not, their response is coded as ‘0’. Since most of
the circumcisions had occurred before the survey, we had to infer that the
status of the independent variables for women had not changed dramati-
cally over time. To provide a partial test of this assumption, we conducted
the analysis on a smaller subset of women who had at least one daughter
under six years of age. All effects were in the same direction and were con-
sistent in statistical significance. Although the analysis of the behavior vari-
able must be interpreted with caution because of these assumptions, the
alternative of not considering it at all is hardly persuasive.
Table 3 lists and describes the explanatory variables used in the hier-
archical logistic analyses. Indicators of modernity and exposure to inter-
national norms are years of education and dummy variables indicating
college attendance, radio ownership, working for pay and living in an
urban area. We expect western influence to be particularly strong at the
college level. University systems are based on western models and are
important carriers of world norms. We use radio rather than television
ownership as a measure of exposure because the latter is highly corre-
lated with the presence of electricity. We also predicted that older women,
Table 3 Descriptive Statistics

Standard deviations,
Means continuous variables
Dependent variables
Favor the continuation of FGC .73
Have or plan to circumcise daughter .72
Individual-level independent variables
Has electricity .48
Years of basic education 2.1 2.6 (range 0–10)
Has a college education .03
Owns a radio .63
Works outside the home .10
Lives in urban area .33
Age 33.1 8.0 (range 15–49)
Muslim .80
Christian .18
Circumcised .83
Regional-level independent variable
Percentage of men employed
outside agriculture .71 .22
Female literacy percentage .41 .27
Percentage of households with electricity .49 .42
Development factor .13 .96
18
01Boyle (bc/d) 12/2/02 2:25 pm Page 19
when all other factors are controlled, would express less favor for the
practice of FGC.16 Modernization theorists have demonstrated that
attitude change is possible among older as well as younger individuals
(see Inkeles, 1971; cf. Inglehart and Baker, 2000). Nevertheless, older
woman are particularly likely to have grown up in an environment where
FGC was simply taken for granted. Furthermore, older women may have
more of a stake in the status quo. We therefore include age as a control
variable.
In addition to the hypothesized main effect of religion on attitudes and
behavior, our theory predicts that international ideals will be more salient
for Christians than for those of other religions. To test this idea, we include
tests for interaction terms that multiply the Christianity measure times
radio ownership and whether the woman had attended college.
Finally, we include a variable to represent intergenerational stability in
attitudes and behavior – whether the respondent herself is circumcised.
Although this is a cross-sectional analysis, by controlling for whether
women themselves are circumcised, we are able to make some assessment
of change over time. In conditions where no change is occurring, women
who are circumcised will circumcise their daughters; those who are not
circumcised will not. Likewise, women who are circumcised will favor
the continuation of FGC. As noted previously, Table 1 demonstrates the
almost invariant distribution of the dependent variables on women’s cir-
cumcision. Uncircumcised women tend both to not have their daughters
circumcised and to oppose the practice (85.4 percent), while circumcised
women tend both to circumcise their daughters and to favor the practice
(79.0 percent). If we find that other factors decrease the probability that
women circumcise their daughters or favor the continuation of the prac-
tice when the women’s own circumcision experience is controlled, then we will
be able to make cautious inferences about changes in attitudes and behav-
iors over time.
The individual, within-region, model is:
logit(FGC favored/practiced) B0j BX

q111
q qij eij
where B0j is the intercept, Xqij is the value of the coefficient q associated
with respondent i in region j, and Bq is the partial effect of a coefficient
on the log of the odds of favoring the continuation of FGC or having one’s
daughter circumcised. This equation reflects the influence of micro-level
effects: how women’s characteristics affect the probability of favoring the
continuation of FGC and of practicing this behavior on their daughters.
Although it is common to center all individual-level variables at their
group means to facilitate interpretation of the intercept and regression
19
01Boyle (bc/d)
Table 4 Hierarchical Non-Linear Modela of Individual and Regional Effects on the Probability of Women with Daughters
Circumcising their daughters Favoring the continuation of FGC
12/2/02
Model 1 Model 2 Model 3 Model 4
Coeff. T-ratio Odds Coeff. T-ratio Odds Coeff. T-ratio Odds Coeff. T-ratio Odds
Intercept: Mean log-odds –2.51*** –9.73 0.08 –0.85† –1.90 0.43 –0.78*** 4.02 0.46 0.77† 1.83 2.16
2:25 pm
Regional level, predicting
intercept (N = 33)
Country (Egypt omitted)

Kenya –2.30*** –4.52 0.10 –1.90*** –3.95 0.15
Page 20
Mali –3.23*** –4.88 0.04 –2.43*** –3.86 0.09
Niger –2.49** –3.56 0.08 –1.92** –2.93 0.15
Sudan –0.14 –0.25 0.87 –1.29* –2.44 0.28
Regional Development b –0.70** –2.84 0.50 –0.62* –2.68 0.54
Personal level (N = 24,976)
Physical environment
Electricity 0.06 0.56 1.06 0.04 0.37 1.04 –0.34*** –4.09 0.71 –0.36*** –4.19 0.70
20
Urban area 0.11 1.34 1.12 0.12 1.44 1.13 –0.44*** –5.82 0.64 –0.44*** –5.81 0.64
Exposure to global culture
Education –0.16*** –14.22 0.85 –0.16*** –14.16 0.85 –0.18*** –18.72 0.84 –0.18*** –18.39 0.84
College –1.85*** –15.40 0.16 –1.85*** –15.42 0.16 –1.45*** –12.52 0.22 –1.47*** –12.63 0.23
Has radio –0.12* –1.99 0.89 –0.11† –1.90 0.90 –0.29*** –4.90 0.75 –0.27*** –4.61 0.76
Works outside home –0.58*** –7.71 0.56 –0.58*** –7.76 0.56 –0.40*** –5.87 0.67 –0.40*** –5.74 0.67
Christian –0.82*** –6.28 0.44 –0.79*** –5.95 0.45 –1.26*** –10.61 0.28 –1.22*** –9.95 0.30
College*Christian –1.26* –2.44 0.28 –1.28* –2.48 0.28 –0.93† –1.85 0.39 –0.94† –1.89 0.39
Radio*Christian –0.41*** –3.49 0.66 –0.41*** –3.52 0.66 –0.13 –1.15 0.88 –0.14 –1.23 0.87
Age 0.06*** 19.82 1.06 0.06*** 19.83 1.06 –0.01*** –4.46 0.99 –0.01*** –4.23 0.99
Respondent circumcised 4.94*** 44.28 139.77 4.94*** 44.85 139.77 3.69*** 42.71 40.04 3.67*** 41.90 39.26
Random effect (baseline
2.41, Models 1 and 2;
1.94, Models 3 and 4)c 1.86 0.73 1.05 0.67
*p ≤ .05; **p ≤ .01; ***p ≤ .001; †p < .10.

a Logit link function, unit-specific model.
b Factor incorporating regional percentage employed outside agricultural sector, regional percentage literate and regional percentage with electricity.
c Baseline model included only respondent’s circumcision as a variable.
01Boyle (bc/d) 12/2/02 2:25 pm Page 21
coefficients (Bryk and Raudenbush, 1992), we chose to center only the age
variable at the regional mean. The other explanatory variables are dummy-
coded or distributed continuously, such that a value of 0 (Xqij = 0) is
meaningful in this context.
The regional-level model includes a latent variable reflecting regional
development and dummy variables representing country of residence
(with Egypt as the omitted country). The latent development variable was
created to conserve degrees of freedom at the regional level – the sample
size at this level is 33. Using principal components factor analysis, three
indicators, the percentage of men employed outside agriculture, the
female literacy rate and the percentage of households with electricity,
loaded onto a single development factor (factors loadings were all greater
than .78), explaining 72 percent of the variance. A regression-scored factor
was then used as our measure of development in subsequent regional-
level analyses. The regional-level model, then, predicts the value of the
intercept (B0j) in the individual-level equation.17 This model specification
allows us to examine the influence of aggregate variables measuring
regional or national features on women’s attitudes or behavior, after
statistically adjusting or controlling for their individual characteristics.
The model can be written as:
B0j
0001(development)02(Kenya)03(Mali)04(Niger)05(Sudan)U0j
where 00 represents the constant term or mean regional likelihood of

favoring FGC continuation or practicing this behavior on daughters, and
01 through 05 are the effects of regional level of development and living
in a particular country on the regional probabilities. The region-level error
term, U0j, is the unique contribution to each region (random effect associ-
ated with each region). As mentioned previously, all of the individual-
level slopes were fixed across regions, except for the intercept term,
making our model a random intercept model with fixed individual-level
covariates. Our goal then is to determine the relative importance of
modernization, women’s exposure to western ideas and local cultural
circumstances on the probability that women favor the continuation of
FGC and circumcise their daughters.
Results
Table 4 displays the results of the hierarchical logistic analyses in model-
building steps. The effects of women’s individual-level characteristics on
the likelihood of circumcising daughters and favoring the continuation of
the practice are shown in Models 1 and 3. In Models 2 and 4, we test for
21
01Boyle (bc/d) 12/2/02 2:25 pm Page 22
the possibility that the mean regional probability of having the daughter
circumcised or favoring the continuation of FGC may be explained by the
regional level of development or the country where the region is located,
after adjusting for individual-level characteristics.18 We show estimated
regression coefficients and their test statistics for comparison, as well as
exponentiated values of the coefficients (Exp(B)), or odds-ratios, which
are often more easily interpreted. Random effects of the constant term or
intercept coefficient are found in the lower panels in the two tables. Com-
paring these variance components across models indicates how much of
the variability in attitudes and behavior across regions is explained by
our predictors.
We hypothesized, based on modernization theories, that development
would decrease the probability that women would favor the continuation
of FGC or have their daughters circumcised. The results are quite inter-
esting and suggest that the effect of development varies depending on
the level of analysis considered. Electricity decreased the probability that
a woman would favor the continuation of FGC by 29 percent (Exp(B) =
.71), but had no effect on behavior. Likewise, the effects of urbanization
are mixed – living in an urban area decreases the probability that a woman
will favor the continuation of FGC by 36 percent, but had no significant
effect on behavior. When education, media, employment and the other
factors are controlled, urban women are just as likely as rural women to
circumcise their daughters. Living in a city led women to voice opposi-
tion to FGC, but city women were no less likely to circumcise their daugh-
ters than rural women. These finding are particularly informative because
most modernization analyses only consider attitude change. The most
plausible interpretation is that attitudes change before behavior, and that
our analysis captured women in the midst of change.
Turning to national development measured at a more macro-level of
analyses, we found that regional development, when all regions were con-
sidered, had no statistically significant effect on either attitudes or behav-
ior. However, when we controlled for country, intra-national regional
development did correspond to reductions in the probabilities that
women would favor the continuation of FGC or circumcise their daugh-
ters (Models 2 and 4). The most surprising finding was that women in
Egypt – the most developed country – were more likely to favor circum-
cision or have their daughters circumcised than women in other coun-
tries. (The greater probability of favoring FGC in Egypt was statistically
significant compared to all other countries; the greater probability of cir-
cumcising one’s daughters was statistically significant compared to all
other countries except the Sudan and, even there, the difference was in
the same direction.) This likely explains why regional development had
no effect without controlling for country.
22
01Boyle (bc/d) 12/2/02 2:25 pm Page 23
Our findings suggest that regional development influences attitudes

and behavior, but national resistance to international norms can outweigh
the influence of regional development. Ironically, Egypt’s relatively high
level of development, when individual factors are controlled, may have
allowed its overall population to be more resistant to the international
norm against FGC than the populations of other countries. Neoinstitu-
tionalism, which emphasizes integration into the international system
rather than internal development, has an easier time explaining this
finding than modernization theory. It is also important to note, that of the
five countries in our analysis, in recent years Egypt was the country with
more outspoken opponents to the international norm against FGC. When
data become available, an analysis following trends over time or includ-
ing more countries will be useful to determine with precision the meaning
of the Egyptian effect.
We hypothesized that those carriers of the scripts of the international
system – education, mass media and working in the paid economy – would
affect women’s attitudes and behavior with respect to FGC. These hypoth-
eses were confirmed. Both years of education and attending college (a
benefit attained by only 2.6 percent of the women in our sample) have
significantly negative effects on the probability that women favor the con-
tinuation of FGC or circumcise their daughters. Each year of basic edu-
cation decreases the probability that a woman will circumcise her daughters
by 15 percent and decreases the likelihood of preferring FGC continuation
by 16 percent.19 For those few who did experience college, the correlation
with opposition to FGC is very pronounced. Women who had not attended
college are about seven times (1/.14) more likely to circumcise their daugh-
ters and about five times (1/.22) more likely to favor FGC continuation than
college attendees. Owning a radio also decreases the likelihood of practic-
ing FGC by 11 percent (Exp(B) = .89) and favorable attitudes by 25 percent
(Exp(B) = .75). In addition, working for pay (Hypothesis 7) decreases by 44
percent (Exp(B) = .57) the likelihood that a woman has or intends to cir-
cumcise her daughter and decreases by 33 percent (Exp(B) = .67) the proba-
bility of favoring continuation of the practice.
Our next set of hypotheses considered factors that would promote
resistance to the global norm against FGC. Predictably, being Christian
had a negative effect on the dependent variables (Hypothesis 8). Muslims
and women of traditional African faiths were nearly twice (1/.44) as likely
to circumcise their daughters and four times (1/.28) more likely to favor
the continuation of FGC than Christian women.
Hypothesis 9 predicted that Christian women would find the anti-
FGC message of international activists more salient than other women
because the international script would be more consistent with the indi-
vidualist ideology implicit in Christianity. The interaction terms testing
23
01Boyle (bc/d) 12/2/02 2:25 pm Page 24
this proposition demonstrate an interesting effect. As expected, college-

educated Christian women are significantly more likely to oppose FGC
and not circumcise their daughters than either college-educated Muslims
or non-college-educated Christians. As for the salience of messages from
the mass media, Model 1 indicates that radio has a stronger effect on
behavior for Christian women. However, religion did not affect the
salience of mass media for attitudes. The interaction term in Model 3 of
Table 4 is not statistically significant. This finding suggests that radio
affects attitudes more easily than behavior.
The hypothesized effect of age was statistically significant in both cases,
but contrary to our hypothesis, the direction of the effect was reversed
for the two dependent variables. Older women were less likely to favor
the continuation of circumcision, although each year of age increased the
probability that a woman had or planned to circumcise her daughters by
6 percent. Older women may have circumcised their daughters before
there was international pressure opposing the practice. The reverse effect
for attitudes is consistent with prior findings (see Williams and
Sobieszczyk, 1997). It may be an artifact of the survey technique. Older
women who oppose FGC may feel freer to say so than younger women
because older women are accorded considerable independence in Muslim
societies (see, for example, Geiger, 1997).20
Predictably, our measure of intergenerational stability, a woman’s own
circumcision experience, has a powerful impact on both her practice of
this behavior and her attitude toward FGC. The logit coefficients pro-
duced by both equations are very large in comparison to the other
explanatory variables in the models. Interpreting the coefficients in Model
1 as odds-ratios, all else being equal, circumcised women are 140 times
more likely than uncircumcised women to circumcise their daughters and
40 times more likely to favor continuing the practice in their countries.
We advise caution in inferences regarding the impact of this variable. The
magnitude of these coefficients is to some extent determined by the small
cell counts in the relationship of women’s experience of circumcision to
circumcising daughters and favoring FGC continuation (see Table 1).
Discussion
This research empirically examines the conditions under which individual
behaviors and attitudes are consistent with an international norm – a
norm already institutionalized in national policies. Based on a growing
literature, we know that global institutions diffuse and become national
policies. In the case of FGC, we also know that each of the five countries
in this analysis have an official state policy against the practice (as do all
other countries in which FGC is practiced, if they have a government).
24
01Boyle (bc/d) 12/2/02 2:25 pm Page 25
What had never been addressed prior to this research is the diffusion of
norms from the international/national levels to individual attitudes and
behavior. We found that neoinstitutionalism helps to explain how
modernization processes actually work. Modernization is not simply a
process of changing the perspectives of individuals in ‘modern’ environ-
ments; rather it is a process of reshaping individuals’ entire cultural uni-
verse.
Factors linked to how individuals experience their physical environ-
ment – urban dwelling and electricity – affected attitudes but not behav-
ior. Specifically, we found that, all else being equal, women who lived in
urban areas and whose households had electricity were more likely to say
they opposed the continuation of FGC, but were no less likely to have cir-
cumcised their daughters. The women in our sample circumcised their
daughters in an earlier time period, but are expressing current attitudes.
Thus, this may indicate steps in a process of change where attitude change
is followed by behavior change (see Mackie, 1996; contra Festinger, 1964).
Going forward, one might find that urban dwelling and electricity will
begin to affect behavior as well as attitudes. Our findings suggest that
control over nature operates differently, perhaps more slowly, than script-
carriers.
One of our most interesting findings was how the independent effect of
modernization varied across levels of analysis. As noted earlier, whether
a household had electricity was influential on attitudes toward FGC, but
had no independent effect on behavior. At the regional level, regional
development by itself had no effect on either attitudes or behavior. It was
only when we introduced the categorical country variable that regional
development had a significant negative effect on the probabilities of favor-
ing FGC or circumcising one’s daughter. Furthermore, the population in
the most developed of our five countries, Egypt, when individual-level
factors were controlled, was the most resistant to changing attitudes and
behavior with respect to FGC. It appears that, under some circumstances,
development at the national level can actually provide a source of resist-
ance to international norms. This is consistent with, but elaborates on, a
theme of other recent research, that ‘cultural zones’ or national ‘rational-
ized meaning systems’ are important sources of uniqueness in the ‘global
village’ (Inglehart and Baker, 2000; Dobbin, 1996). It is also consistent with
earlier findings that it is often the poorest countries that are the first to
‘sign on’ to new international goals – and that this national-level acquies-
cence to international edicts has an effect on individuals.
‘Script-carriers’ – education, college, mass media and employment –
consistently created significant reductions in the probability that women
in five African countries circumcised their daughters or favored the con-
tinuation of FGC. In other words, script-carriers influenced both attitudes
25
01Boyle (bc/d) 12/2/02 2:25 pm Page 26
and behavior with respect to a traditional practice targeted for change by

the international community.
Christianity was a strong predictor of rejecting FGC – both in attitudes
and behavior. In addition, we found evidence that anti-FGC ideas picked
up in college were most influential for Christian women, suggesting that
international ideals are more salient for some women than for others.
Likewise, the mass media had more impact on behavior – discouraging
the practice – among Christian women than Muslim women. On the other
hand, the effect of the mass media was equally influential on the attitudes
of Christians and Muslims – the interaction of radio ownership and
religion was not statistically significant. The results provide partial
support for the hypothesis that alternative meaning systems – such as
those provided by religion – can facilitate or impede the impact of
carriers of world culture.
The relationship between international ideals and local cultural change
is fundamentally important in the modern global context. Many areas
targeted for reform by the international community are viewed as import-
ant components of local values and lifestyles: child labor, women’s
employment, marriage customs and so forth. This study suggests that the
adoption of a ‘modern’ lifestyle is not an inevitable result of acquiring the
tools that give a person mastery over nature. Rather, the transmission of
particular ideologies through global institutionalized arrangements
appears to be the critical factor in abandoning practices like FGC.
In addition to replication for issues other than FGC, it would be import-
ant to study these processes over time. Further, because of the nature of
our data, we did not develop the specific role of either international
governmental organizations (IGO) or international non-governmental
organizations (INGO) in the process of cultural change. Nevertheless, the
role of professionalized IGO and INGO activists who possess relatively
large amounts of resources is certainly part of the broader neoinstitu-
tionalist argument of how change occurs (see Boli and Thomas, 1997,
1999). Finally, although this research provides considerably more speci-
ficity of the process of cultural change than previous research, it would
be interesting to consider the local process with even more specificity.
There are many possibilities to expand on the project begun here – possi-
bilities that explore local processes without losing sight of the broader
institutional contexts within which they occur.
Notes
This research was funded by the National Science Foundation, Grant No. SBR-
9806088, ‘POWRE: The Adoption and Enforcement of Anti-Female-Genital-Muti-
lation Laws’. The authors would like to thank Lara Cleveland, Ryan King, Corwin
26
01Boyle (bc/d) 12/2/02 2:25 pm Page 27
Kruse, Candace Kruttschnitt, Ross Macmillan, John Meyer, Joachim Savelsberg,

Evan Schofer, Jeremy Staff and Christopher Uggen for helpful comments on earlier
drafts of this article.
1. These descriptions are narrow depictions of both theories. For example,

modernization studies tend to acknowledge cultural influences (albeit at the
national level) on individual change (see Inglehart and Baker, 2000).
2. Naming this practice is highly controversial. Both the terms ‘circumcision’ and
‘female genital mutilation’ have been criticized as political. Attempting to
adopt a middle ground, we use the term ‘female genital cutting’ broadly to
include sunna, clitoridectomy and infibulation.
3. With respect to women, the rhetoric of the international system focuses on
gender equality and women as citizens, with a goal of closing the gap between
the reality of gender inequality and the ideal of equality (Berkovitch, 1999:
174–5).
4. This goes to the heart of the debate over whether western feminists are im-
perialistic when they target private behavior in developing countries for change
(see Narayan, 1997; Bulbeck, 1998; An Na’im, 1990). Unfortunately, we do not
have the space to fully discuss the implications of this argument for our case.
5. For a history of the practice itself, see Toubia and Izett (1998), Mackie (1996)
and El Dareer (1982). For histories of international and national action with
respect to the practice, see Murray (1974), Assaad (1980), Brennan (1989),
Lightfoot-Klein (1989), Keck and Sikkink (1998), Berkovitch and Bradley (1999)
and Boyle and Preves (2000).
6. Unless otherwise noted, the country background information in this section
comes from the US State Department (1998), Central Intelligence Agency
(1999) or Information Please Almanacs (1999).
7. Some modernization theories make a distinction between percentage
employed in industry and percentage employed in service jobs. The percent-
age in the service sector in our regions was so low that this was not a useful
distinction for our analysis.
8. Our reasoning here is that regional female literacy rates and regional percent-
ages of households with electricity affect an individual’s circumstances over
and above individual education or electricity use.
9. The Demographic and Health Surveys or their precursors have been admin-
istered since 1974. The program is funded by the US Agency for International
Development. To demonstrate the quality of these data, we elaborate the
example of the third Egyptian survey. The Demographic and Health Surveys
used a multi-stage stratified sampling design in Egypt, and the response rate
exceeded 98 percent for women. In addition, the sampling error was less than
2 percent for all representative variables (see El-Zanaty et al., 1996: Appen-
dices B and C).
10. Data considerations were important in selecting the five countries. FGC
occurs in each of the five countries, and recent Demographic and Health
Surveys asked women about their attitudes and behavior with respect to FGC
in each of the countries. No other countries have the complete repertoire of
information.
27
01Boyle (bc/d) 12/2/02 2:25 pm Page 28
11. In Niger, women were asked whether they had heard of FGC. If they had not,
they were excluded from the analysis. Based on the data regarding age of
daughter’s circumcision, we determined that some girls were circumcised in
their teens (most were circumcised much younger). Thus we selected 18 as
the upper age limit. Because the sample could include women who had their
daughters circumcised before international pressure was intense, we included
a control variable for daughter’s age. It had no effect. We also conducted an
identical analysis on a subset of women with at least one child under six. The
results of that analysis are reported in the text.
12. Specific descriptions of regions are available from the authors upon request.
13. We use the computer program HLM 4.04 to estimate all HGLM equations.
14. In Sudan women were asked what form of circumcision (sunna, clitoridec-
tomy, infibulation) they would like to see continue. We could not take
advantage of that information because it was not available for the other
countries and limiting the analysis to Sudan would have made regional and
national comparisons impossible. See Williams and Sobieszczyk (1997) for a
more detailed analysis of Sudanese attitudes.
15. In Egypt and the Sudan, women were asked whether they had or intended to
have their eldest daughter circumcised. In Kenya, Mali and Niger, women
were asked whether they had or intended to have any of their daughters
circumcised. To test whether the phrasing of the question had an effect, we
ran the same analysis, selecting women with only one child. The results were
similar in terms of effects and statistical significance.
16. Daughter’s age and month of survey were initially included as controls as
well, but were never statistically significant. The lack of statistical significance
for month of survey suggests that countries had not yet reached the ‘tipping
point’ theorized by Mackie (1996), that is, the point at which behavior changes
dramatically and abruptly. Perhaps because the effect of ‘social disorganiz-
ation’ on gender relations can be contradictory (see Sanday, 1981; Lipman-
Blumen, 1972), we also found no independent effect for a regional social
disorganization factor that was initially included in the analysis.
17. Preliminary analysis of random coefficient models indicated insignificant
levels of variation across regions in the individual-level coefficients. Thus,
these coefficients are specified as fixed effects in the following models, and
the only coefficient that is allowed to vary randomly is the intercept. This
model specification is termed a random intercept model with level-1 covari-
ates by Bryk and Raudenbush (1992).
18. Note that the coefficients for the individual-level effects remain stable across
models. This is due to specifying these parameters as fixed across regions; the
only parameter that is allowed to vary is the constant term.
19. The effect of education on modernization outcomes can vary by country (see
Weil, 1985). To test for this possibility in our analysis, in separate equations
(comparable to Model 3 in Table 4), we allowed the effect of education to vary
and predicted the error term using the categorical country variable. We found
no significant national differences in the effect of education on behavior. With
respect to attitudes, education in all of the countries had a significant negative
effect on the probability that a woman would favor the continuation of FGC,
28
01Boyle (bc/d) 12/2/02 2:25 pm Page 29
but education in Niger decreased the probability by 16 percent more than

education in Kenya. The education effect on attitudes was not significantly
different for any of the other countries. It would be interesting to extend Weil’s
work in a separate analysis by further exploring how historical differences
between Niger and Kenya led to the larger education effect in Niger. No other
variable’s outcome was affected when country difference in education was
controlled.
20. In the future, we hope to explore this outcome further by dividing respon-
dents into age subsamples and conducting separate analyses.
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Biographical Note: Elizabeth Heger Boyle is Assistant Professor of Sociology and

Law at the University of Minnesota. She researches topics in law, politics, gender
and the international system. Her most recent project considers the process of
naturalization among African refugees to western countries.
Address: Sociology Department, 909 Social Science Tower, University of Minnesota,

Minneapolis, MN 55455, USA. [email: boyle@atlas.socsci.umn.edu]
Biographical Note: Barbara J. McMorris is a research scientist with the Social

Development Group at the University of Washington. Her research addresses
life course models of delinquency and alcohol/drug use and prevention. She is
currently studying the effects of multiple life transitions on delinquent
behaviors among Native American adolescents (with Les Whitbeck and Dan
Hoyt), sentencing disparities (with Ed Munoz), and white-collar deviance (with
Christopher Uggen).
Address: Social Research Development Group, University of Washington, 9725 3rd

Avenue NE, Suite 401, Seattle, WA 98115, USA.
Biographical Note: Mayra Gómez recently received her PhD from the University
of Minnesota. Her dissertation research explained the rise, fall and changing
character of human rights abuses by governments in Cuba, Nicaragua and El
Salvador over the last half-century. She has published extensively in human
rights journals, and is currently a research officer for the Centre on Housing
Rights and Evictions (COHRE).
Address: Centre on Housing Rights and Evictions, 83 rue de Montbrilliant, 1202

Geneva, Switzerland.
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International Sociology http://iss.sagepub.

Local Conformity to International Norms : The Case of Female Genital

The online version of this article can be found at:

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>> Version of Record - Mar 1, 2002

Local Conformity to International

Elizabeth Heger Boyle

abstract: Using the case of female genital cutting (FGC), the

keywords: Africa ✦ female genital cutting ✦ international

International Sociology ✦ March 2002 ✦ Vol 17(1): 5–33

International Sociology Vol. 17 No. 1

Global institutions increasingly set the standards for the appropriate

National Modernization vs International Scripts

Boyle et al. Local Conformity to International Norms

neoinstitutionalist framework, the key empirical factor that links macro-

International Sociology Vol. 17 No. 1

Female Genital Cutting

Consequently, international activists mobilized to eradicate FGC are

Boyle et al. Local Conformity to International Norms

the prepuce, or hood, of the clitoris. ‘Genital excision’ or ‘clitoridectomy’

International Sociology Vol. 17 No. 1

change at the individual level – Table 1 shows modest erosion in the

National Backgrounds and Regional

Table 1 Cross-Tabulations of Behavior by Attitudes for Uncircumcised Women and

Boyle et al. Local Conformity to International Norms

In the modern historical context, all of the countries have experienced

International Sociology Vol. 17 No. 1

the country’s total population. In Niger, a group of army officers over-

Boyle et al. Local Conformity to International Norms

International Sociology Vol. 17 No. 1

and medicine. Gaining the capability to control one’s physical environ-

Boyle et al. Local Conformity to International Norms

Privileging exposure to the international system in this way leads to

International Sociology Vol. 17 No. 1

Islamic groups increases the likelihood of circumcision. For example, Ellen

Data and Method

Boyle et al. Local Conformity to International Norms

the international system. Fortunately, recent Demographic and Health

International Sociology Vol. 17 No. 1

Table 3 Descriptive Statistics

Boyle et al. Local Conformity to International Norms

logit(FGC favored/practiced) B0j BX

International Sociology Vol. 17 No. 1

*p ≤ .05; **p ≤ .01; ***p ≤ .001; †p < .10.

Boyle et al. Local Conformity to International Norms

where 00 represents the constant term or mean regional likelihood of

International Sociology Vol. 17 No. 1

Boyle et al. Local Conformity to International Norms

Our findings suggest that regional development influences attitudes

International Sociology Vol. 17 No. 1

this proposition demonstrate an interesting effect. As expected, college-

Boyle et al. Local Conformity to International Norms

International Sociology Vol. 17 No. 1

and behavior with respect to a traditional practice targeted for change by

Boyle et al. Local Conformity to International Norms

Kruse, Candace Kruttschnitt, Ross Macmillan, John Meyer, Joachim Savelsberg,

1. These descriptions are narrow depictions of both theories. For example,

International Sociology Vol. 17 No. 1

Boyle et al. Local Conformity to International Norms

but education in Niger decreased the probability by 16 percent more than

International Sociology Vol. 17 No. 1

Brennan, Katherine (1989) ‘The Influence of Cultural Relativism on International

Boyle et al. Local Conformity to International Norms

p ≤ .05; p ≤ .01; p ≤ .001; †p < .10.

where 00 represents the constant term or mean regional likelihood of